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Glite Dictionary
to make the world go around

to make the world go around

3 5.5
The most important thing that makes life keep going, like money or love
  • idiom
translation icon : hacer que el mundo gire
  • What makes the world go around?
  • money makes the world go around
  • love makes the world go around

Hubris does make the world go around.

Examples

  • It makes the world go around.

    Laughing Sinners (1931)

  • They say that love makes the world go around, but how much does what we love cost us?

    Fiction book (1996)

  • Capitalism makes the world go around.

    Blog text (3)

  • Yeah, well, it makes the world go around, doesn't it, Bob?

    August Rush (2007)

  • Many believe that love is what makes the world go around.

  • For many people, money makes the world go around and drives their decisions.

  • Some say it is creativity that makes the world go around and inspires innovation.

How Important

to make the world go around
3 5.5
all-important
24 4.0
important
∞ 1.0
to matter
∞ 1.4
unimportant
54 1.9

Surface Forms

make the world go around infinitive
made the world go around past
made the world go around past participle
making the world go around present participle
makes the world go around third person singular

Morphology

make + the + world + go + around

The phrase uses a concrete image (the world physically turning) combined with 'make' (to cause) and 'go around' (to move/circulate), so a learner who knows the parts can often infer a general sense that something causes everything to keep functioning. However, the meaning is metaphorical and conventionalized (e.g., 'money/love makes the world go round'), so the precise idiomatic nuance is not fully predictable from the constituents alone.

Etymology

Make the world go around makes us imagine a big wheel where one thing pushes the world so it goes around. So people use it to say that something like money or love is 'the most important thing that makes everything work'.