lost world

English

Noun

lost world (countable and uncountable, plural lost worlds)

1. (uncountable) A subgenre of the fantasy or science fiction genres that involves the discovery of an unknown world out of time, place, or both.
   • 2014, Elana Gomel, Narrative Space and Time: Representing Impossible Topologies in Literature‎^[1], Routledge, →ISBN:

     Developed by such popular writers as Arthur Conan Doyle, H. Rider Haggard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Abraham Merrit, the lost world novel presents small, encapsulated worlds, inhabited by the living fossils of some prehistoric culture, often with dinosaurs or other extinct beasts thrown in for good measure.

2. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see lost,‎ world.
   • 2023 July 21, Caitlin Flanagan, “America’s Corporate Tragedy”, in The Atlantic‎^[2]:

     What I’m describing, of course, is a lost world, glimpsed only through history books or the memories of old people.

Further reading

• lost world on Wikipedia.Wikipedia