<P> Since about the 2000s the term Third World has been used less and less . It is being replaced with terms such as developing countries, least developed countries or the Global South . </P> <P> French demographer, anthropologist and historian Alfred Sauvy, in an article published in the French magazine L'Observateur, August 14, 1952, coined the term Third World (French: Tiers Monde), referring to countries that were unaligned with either the Communist Soviet bloc or the Capitalist NATO bloc during the Cold War . His usage was a reference to the Third Estate, the commoners of France who, before and during the French Revolution, opposed the clergy and nobles, who composed the First Estate and Second Estate, respectively . Sauvy wrote, "This third world ignored, exploited, despised like the third estate also wants to be something ." He conveyed the concept of political non-alignment with either the capitalist or communist bloc . </P> <P> The term "Third World" arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either NATO or the Communist Bloc . The United States, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Western European nations and their allies represented the First World, while the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and their allies represented the Second World . This terminology provided a way of broadly categorizing the nations of the Earth into three groups based on political and economic divisions . Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the term Third World has been used less and less . It is being replaced with terms such as developing countries, least developed countries or the Global South . The concept itself has become outdated as it no longer represents the current political or economic state of the world . </P> <P> The Third World was normally seen to include many countries with colonial pasts in Africa, Latin America, Oceania and Asia . It was also sometimes taken as synonymous with countries in the Non-Aligned Movement . In the dependency theory of thinkers like Raúl Prebisch, Walter Rodney, Theotonio dos Santos, and Andre Gunder Frank, the Third World has also been connected to the world - systemic economic division as "periphery" countries dominated by the countries comprising the economic "core". </P>

Where did the terms first - third world come from who did they refer to at the time
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