World Wide Web

English

Etymology

1990, coined by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau, from worldwide and web.

Proper noun

World Wide Web

1. Collectively, all of the web pages on the Internet which hyperlink to each other and to other kinds of documents and media.
   • 1990, Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau “WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project” at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) website (retrieved 2010-11-16).

     WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project [title]

2. (computing) Internet resources that are retrieved by Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

Usage notes

• Although worldwide is a single word (also spelt as world-wide), World Wide Web is spelled as three separate words.
• World Wide Web and Web are sometimes loosely used to refer to the entire Internet, but this is not technically accurate.

Synonyms

• the Web

Abbreviations

• WWW
• 3W

Translations

An information space on the Internet

• Afrikaans: Wêreldwye web (af)
• Arabic: شبكة عنكبوتية عالمية (ar) (shábaka 3ankabuutíyya 3alaamíyya) f
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 萬維網 (cmn), 万维网 (cmn) (Wànwéiwǎng)

• Esperanto: Tut-Tera Teksaĵo (eo)
• Finnish: web (fi), WWW (fi), maailmanlaajuinen tietoverkko (fi)
• French: Toile d'araignée mondiale (fr) f
• German: World Wide Web (de) n
• Greek: Παγκόσμιος Ιστός (el) (Pagkósmios Istós) m
• Hungarian: világháló (hu)
• Icelandic: veraldarvefurinn (is) m
• Irish: Gréasán Domhanda (ga) m
• Japanese: ワールド ワイド ウェブ (ja) (Wārudo Waido Uebu)
• Korean: 월드 와이드 웹 (ko) (Woldeu Waideu Wep)

• Latin: Tela Totius Terrae (la)
• Macedonian: Светска мрежа (mk) (Svétska mréža) f
• Malay: jaringan sejagat (ms)
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: verdensveven

  Nynorsk: verdsveven

• Polish: World Wide Web (pl) m, ogólnoświatowa sieć (pl) f
• Russian: Всемирная паутина (ru) (Vsemírnaja pautína) f, веб (ru) (veb) m
• Sanskrit: विश्वव्यापीजाल (sa) (Viśvavyāpījāla) m
• Sotho: Marangrang a phatlalletseng (st)
• Venda: webe yo ṱanganyaho shango
• Volapük: volaresod (vo)
• Welsh: Gwe Fyd-Eang (cy) f
• Xhosa: uthungelwano lwehlabathi kwi-intanethi (xh)
• Zulu: Isizindalwazi sokuxhumana somhlaba jikelele (zu)

See also

• Wikipedia article on the World Wide Web
• Appendix:American Dialect Society words of the year