What does dotcom mean?
A dotcom is a company that does its principal business over the internet, a term borrowed from the '.com' suffix that ends the web addresses of commercial sites. The word emerged in the mid-1990s, when the explosive growth of internet businesses made such a shorthand necessary, and it quickly became emblematic of an entire economic era. During the 'dotcom boom', investors poured money into young internet companies, many of which had never turned a profit; when confidence collapsed around 2000, the resulting 'dotcom crash' wiped out billions in market value and gave the term some of its cautionary associations. Today, dotcom is used neutrally for any web-based business, though phrases like 'dotcom bubble' retain a wry, historical flavour. It functions both as a standalone noun ('a struggling dotcom') and attributively ('dotcom shares'). Informal but widely accepted in business and journalistic writing, it remains one of the most recognisable coinages of the internet age.
A company that operates chiefly over the internet, especially one whose name ends in '.com'.
"The surviving dotcoms of the nineties became today's tech giants."
Often pluralised as 'dotcoms' or 'dot-coms'; both spellings are widely accepted, with the closed form increasingly standard.
Used as a modifier to denote something relating to internet companies, particularly during the boom-and-bust period of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
"Venture capitalists grew cautious after the dotcom collapse."
Common in fixed collocations such as 'dotcom bubble', 'dotcom boom', 'dotcom crash', and 'dotcom era'.
Both closed and hyphenated plurals are common; style guides vary, but the closed form has grown more frequent over time.
"Hundreds of dotcoms folded after the bubble burst in 2000."
The word didn't exist before the mid-1990s — and within five years of being coined it had named one of the greatest financial bubbles in history.
Reviewed by Deb Chak, Editor. AI-assisted content curated by RJS Tech Solutions LLP.
Etymology of dotcom
The word dotcom is formed by compounding 'dot', referring to the full stop in a web address, with 'com', short for 'commercial', the top-level domain used by businesses on the internet. Both elements are English in origin within this formation: 'dot' from Old English 'dott' meaning a small mark or spot, and 'com' a modern abbreviation of 'commerce'. The compound arose in the United States during the mid-1990s alongside the rapid rise of internet commerce, and its spread was propelled by the stock-market frenzy surrounding internet companies. Related formations include the open spelling 'dot-com' and the bare domain name '.com'.
How dotcom is actually used
Informal to neutral register; common in journalism and business writing. Often carries connotations of the late-1990s internet gold rush and its subsequent collapse. Frequently used attributively before nouns like 'boom', 'bubble', 'crash', 'era', and 'millionaire'.
Easily confused with dotcom
'Dot com' written as two words usually refers to the '.com' domain suffix itself, while the closed form 'dotcom' typically denotes an internet-based company.
'.com' is the top-level internet domain derived from 'commercial', whereas 'dotcom' is a noun for a company operating online.