World Wide Web
noun
- global system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet
Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /ˈwɜːld ˌwaɪd ˈwɛb/ / /ˈwɝld ˌwaɪd ˈwɛb/
name
Etymology: From worldwide + web. Coined by English computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee and Belgian engineer and computer scientist Robert Cailliau in a paper published on 12 November 1990 (see quotations below).
- Usually preceded by the: all of the hypertext documents (web pages) on the Internet collectively, which are (1) stored in various inter-hyperlinked computers around the world, and (2) retrieved typically by means of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) or (currently more often) its secure version (HTTPS), among others.
“WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project [title] […] Having a world wide web implies some solutions must be found for problems such as different access protocols and different node content formats. These issues are addressed by our proposal.”
“Additionally, gateways exist so that WAIS users can retrieve information from non-WAIS data bases like Gopher, developed by university users of Next computers, and the World Wide Web, which makes available physicists' research from many locations.”