Re: Why "the real world" but not "the real life"?

[Brian <http://www.cs..edu/~b>]

Toby was first in, but all my sources seem to agree:

On 7/15/22 8:22 PM, Toby Mintz wrote:
> 'life' is a mass noun, like 'water', and therefore not typically quantified. 'World' is a count noun.

On 7/16/22 8:02 AM, Goldenberg, Paul wrote:
> I’ve forgotten the technical term, but the difference is between 
countable and not (discrete and continuous if you prefer).
>
> The world is a discrete thing, something to which that definite 
article can point to definitely.  Life is continuous (until it isn’t, of 
course).  Or, better, life, like water, isn’t countable.  Similarly 
“Democracy is complicated,” not “The democracy is complicated” unless 
we’re talking about a particular democracy we’ve already mentioned.

On 7/16/22 6:19 PM, Larry Davidson wrote:
> To oversimplify, the foundational point is to understand the 
difference between count nouns and mass nouns. “World” is always a count 
noun. For example, you can’t say
>
> *(1) I like world.
>
> But “life” can be either a count noun or a mass noun, depending on 
context:
>
> (2) My cat has nine lives. [count]
> (3) The life of an actor is hard. [count]
> (4) Life is hard. [mass]
>
> So the elevator-pitch answer is that count nouns require determiners, 
but mass nouns do not. The truth is more subtle and more complex, but 
that will do.