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5 Concepts of Underdeveloped, Less Developed and Third World The term Third World has been traced t different origins. In Europe in 1920s there was some talk in political circles of finding a third way, meaning a political program that was neither explicitly capitalist nor explicitly socialist in orientation. Another origin lies in the French term Third Estate meaning those countries benefiting from the struggle between the superior forces i.e. US and USSR. Third world was also used to refer to an active group of cooperating countries with a desire to establish a strong group of neutrals during the US-USSR cold war. Their aims were to avoid any entanglements with superpower rivalries and to safeguard their national sovereignty as countries which had recently become independent of European colonial powers. The term Third World when applied to a country is often taken to be synonymous with descriptions like underdeveloped, less developed and developing. However, these latter terms have a different point of reference i.e. the degree of economic and social backwardness. Underdeveloped and less developed imply relative backwardness, while developing implies movement away from backwardness.