worldly belongings
1
3.8
- noun
- /ˈwɜrldli bɪˈloʊŋɪŋz/
:
pertenencias materiales
- He realized that his worldly belongings were just material items that could be replaced.
Examples
-
Georgia's first act of atonement was to hand over... ...all of her worldly belongings to the church.
-
We see their desperation not only in their faces, but in their pathetic little bundles that contain all their worldly belongings.
Fiction book (1999) -
He confessed that for two years he was tempted to leave the order because he found it too hard to give up all his worldly belongings.
Academic text (2018) -
After the flood, many families lost all of their worldly belongings and were left with nothing.
-
Before moving abroad, she sold most of her worldly belongings to minimize what she had to carry.
Synonyms
∞
1.0
Things a person owns or carries
∞
1.0
Personal items like clothes and bags
240
1.7
A thing that belongs to someone
33
3.5
Small personal items a person carries, like clothes or jewelry
16
3.1
Things a person owns that can be moved, like furniture or jewelry
7
3.0
A thing you can touch that belongs to someone
3
4.1
Things a person owns, like clothes, money, and furniture
2
3.2
A physical thing you own like money or a house, not a feeling
1
5.0
The things a person owns, especially material items
1
1.0
Things a person owns and can carry
A thing someone owns that is not spiritual, like money or furniture
A thing you own that you can touch
Antonyms
How Many
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'all material possessions' is directly and compositionally derived from 'worldly' (material/temporal) combined with 'belongings' (items that belong to someone). This adjective + noun composition follows a common and cross-linguistic pattern, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily infer the MWE meaning.
Etymology
Worldly belongings comes from the simple idea of things that belong to this world rather than to the spirit, so worldly means 'of the physical world' and belongings means 'things you own'. Imagine someone leaving home and packing every small item into one bag — that image shows why the phrase means 'material possessions'.