English

Proper noun

World Wide Web

1. Collectively, all of the web pages on the Internet that 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 spelt 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

See also

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