English
World Wide Web
From worldwide + web.
Proto-Indo-European *h₁weydʰh₁- ‘to separate’
Proto-Germanic *wīdaz ‘wide’
Old English wīd ‘wide’
English wide
English -wide ‘throughout’
English worldwide
Proto-Indo-European *webʰ- ‘to weave, braid’
…
Proto-Germanic *wabją ‘something woven; web’
Proto-West Germanic *wabi ‘something woven; web’
Old English webb ‘web’
Middle English web ‘woven fabric’
English web
The story
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).
Today it means
name 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.
Language periods are conventional ranges, not dates for this word.
Etymograph / World Wide Web