I've been noticing recently, that the prevalence of the Web is causing URLs to be articulated much more often in the English language - on radio, on TV, or even just shouted across an office.
Although comedians lampoon the number of dots found in URLs, the main tongue-twister when pronouncing them, is the WWW part at the beginning. HTTP:// is satisfactorily silent, whereas WWW has nine (count 'em) NINE syllables. This is a record for a three letter acronym, let alone a three letter word, which WWW is becoming, and is frankly ridiculous for a word in frequent use.
Following on from QuadAlpha's wish for an HTTP:// symbol, I'm looking for a short way to pronounce WWW. "Ooooo" is open to misinterpretation [Jutta: that's how it would sound in Welsh!], whereas "Wuh-wuh-wuh" sounds too childish to me. I've heard an announcer say "All the double- you's dot foo dot bar" which brings the nine syllables down to a managable five, but I'm sure we can do a lot better than that...-- Lemon, Jul 27 2000 New Hackers Jargon File http://www.tuxedo.o.../jargon/jargon.htmlWhence comes 'wibble' = WWW. [StarChaser, Jul 27 2000] Debunking the 666 thing http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur/wwwfaq.htmlSince thumbwax repeats this lunacy here, I guess a counterlink is needed. [jutta, Jul 27 2000] Just pronounce it 'web' http://Yost.com/misc/nix-on-www.htmlAnd those who don't alias it will suffer! [zardoz, Jan 11 2002] Why we pronounce 'W' as 'double-u' http://www.askoxfor...boutenglish/doubleuMaybe we need a new letter pronunciation. [Adze, Nov 15 2005] MMMbop http://www.lyricsca.../hanson/mmmbop.htmlHanson song lyrics [Cube, Jan 26 2006] I generally use "dub dub dub".
But then, I live in Seattle, where we call the local state university (UW) the "you-dub".-- egnor, Jul 27 2000 I seem to remember that this is a pet gripe of Berners-Lee as well.-- hippo, Jul 27 2000 We're in the habit of ignoring it altogether, which is only a problem when http://www.foo.bar and http://foo.bar don't point to the same place.-- jplummer, Jul 27 2000 How about W3? Thats only four syllables.-- ccaamgw, Jul 27 2000 "WWW" could be pronounced Ooooo"? I don't get it.
Sixtupel-u?
Two syllables: "dubjuze"?
DubDubDub seems to be catching on. (And yes, www.dubdubdub.com is taken.) Maybe it could decay to dubbadub. Rhymes with the squeaky toy in your bathtub.-- jutta, Jul 27 2000 Triple-Dub-- eagle, Jul 27 2000 I like "triple-dub" - the morning DJs I listen to always use that. It rolls off the tongue satisfyingly, there's a sound progression like "Y2K" had. Dubdubdub doesn't have that.-- andrea, Jul 27 2000 At the office, we use tri-dub-- MrJoe, Jul 27 2000 Personally, I like the sound of 'treble dub,' though I omit it when the address works without it, and usually say 'dub dub dub' when it doesn't.-- markfox, Jul 27 2000 This has been baked, as "wub," but hasn't gained wide acceptance because the only people who really need to use it are the sort that actually have to say "aitch tee tee pee colon slash slash double-yoo double-yoo double-yoo."
Besides, it's so expected that it doesn't have to be said slow enough to understand. The time savings is negligible.-- bookworm, Jul 27 2000 From the 'New Hacker's Dictionary comes what I use:
wibble 4. A pronounciation of the letters "www", as seen in URLs; i.e., www.{foo}.com may be pronounced "wibble dot foo dot com" (compare dub dub dub).-- StarChaser, Jul 27 2000 What's so difficult about pronouncing WWW? I think you must all be suffering from cleft palettes and hair lips. I expect you all dribble when you talk as well.
But if you must shorten things then I think WWW just looks like a wavy line. So why not use "wavy" as an abbreviation.-- DrBob, Jul 28 2000 It's not that it's hard to pronounce, it's just that it takes time and effort. If you say "double you double you double you dot halfbakery dot com", the "www" part takes up 56% of the syllables, despite consuming only 17% of the characters.
It's like profiling a program and looking for the "hot spots"... "www" is clearly a hot spot holding back the efficiency of our speech.
And it's just plain tiresome, anyway.-- egnor, Jul 28 2000 Except it invariably gets elided to "dubya-dubya-dubya." Still six syllables, but without the danger of mistranslation that the others have.
Of course, you could just configure your site so that http://foo.com/ works as well as http://www.foo.com/ and avoid the problem.-- bookworm, Jul 28 2000 We use "wob-wob-wob", reminiscent of a wheel bearing that needs attention, much like about 99% of the web :) People who hear us say this pick it up as its easy to say - three syllables.-- jetckalz, Jul 28 2000 egnor, I'm sorry to be pedantic and for going off of the main point, but I suddenly broke out in spots and started sneezing when you mentioned 'efficiency of our speech'. If you mean efficiency of our coding or efficiency of our addressing system please say so.-- DrBob, Jul 30 2000 Thanks for all your suggestions. It certainly seems like there's a lot of people trying to bake this idea, but getting something to catch on in English is an unpredictable business. My favourite so far is the Jargon dictionary's "wibble", (thanks Starchaser) so I'll use that, I think.-- Lemon, Jul 31 2000 I work for a major Canadian ISP, and our tech support people use the full 9 syllables with our customers, or either 'triple-dub' or 'dub-dub-dub' among themselves. However, I really like 'wibble' as it's easier to work with. Thanks, StarChaser (sorry about the mistake earlier).-- BigThor, Aug 05 2000, last modified Sep 12 2000 StarCHASER, please.-- StarChaser, Aug 05 2000 In Sweden they say "ve ve ve punkt Leggless punkt com" three syllables.-- leggless, Aug 22 2000 Hello, All, This is the precise and exact way that 'www' should be pronounced. Tim Berners-Lee who "invented" the world-wide web to speak is british but he was working at the CERN the European Particle Physics Laboratory when it was invented. Their web page is www.cern.ch, .ch is Switzerland, the primary language of Swizerland is German. "www" could also be called "three w" and translated to German that would be pronounced phonentically "drei vay". So if I wanted to you to come to my page I would say "drei vay dot domain dot com". Much shorter, eh?-- dgeiser13, Aug 22 2000 Your pronounciation is excellently short dgeiser, but I'm not sure of your convoluted logic as to why it should be made universal. A German pronounciation for an acronym of English Words? Hmmm. Well, it may catch on.
It occurred to me that an acronym with more syllables than the words it is meant to "shorten" must be rare indeed; one that is three times as long must be unique.-- Lemon, Aug 22 2000 Hey, Lemon! A clarification...i wasn't really trying to use convuluted logic to justify the usage of 'drei vay' for www. As far as I am concerned there didn't have to be a logical reason. Somewhere down the road I think all of the languages of earth will converge (1000 years?) and that earth-wide language will be an amalgam of all of the languages that have ever existed and some we haven't thought of. In that case using my shorthand for 'www' could fit right in. One possible problem I was think of was that computer users might construe someone saying 'drei vay' as 'Drive a:'. Of course we all know that 'Drive a:' on a computer will become obsolete as well. :-)-- dgeiser13, Aug 22 2000 Won't become obsolete, as there will always be a need to save small files and sneakernet them between computers. It's easier to copy the 300k 'Star Wars gangsta rap' file than it is to email it and depend on the network to get it where it's intended. Especially with Slowtus Bloats, it takes less time...
And I still vote for 'wibble'.-- StarChaser, Aug 22 2000 dgeiser- I like this whole language convergence idea, but I have to point you towards the story of Babel, and the fun-to-read account in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. According to Stephenson, and ostensibly the Bible, a single language was forced to fragment by an act of God, or of a god, and this was a good thing because the single language made us all susceptible to neurolinguistic viruses blah blah blah. I thought that might be of interest. Also, Stephenson conjures up a replacment world wide network called the Metaverse. And that's only three syllables. But my vote still goes to wibble.-- f_kedge, Aug 23 2000 how about "wot"?
that is, a contraction of "www" and the dot immediately following it.
"wot ebay dot com" = www.ebay.com
in conversation:
"...yeah, just hit 'foo.bar', *not* 'wotfoo.bar'... no 'wot', man.", "I just found this great site! wothalfbakery.com! check it out!", etc.
of course, I'm explicitly pronouncing this as the last sound in the last half of "robot", not like "what"....
I'm also on the west side of the pond, if that makes a difference...-- absterge, Aug 23 2000 As noted above, the World Wide Web Consortium contracts this to w3c, leading me to suspect that "w3" is the "correct way to contract this acronym. This may be to avoid confusion as in "www.wwwc" and more compatible withcomputers than "3wc". "W3 by" or "3 by w" occur to me, and offers several other variations. Not as interesting as "wibble", but easier to comprehend for the uninitiated.-- Scott_D, Aug 23 2000 -- StarChaser, Sep 12 2000 It seems to me that the easiest way to pronounce the written (or typed) abbreviation "WWW" is simply to un-abbreviate it as "World Wide Web." That's what it stands for after all! (You'll notice that "World Wide Web" is only 3 syllables" and very easy to remember).-- atomopawn, Sep 12 2000 In Utah we usually just say "all that shit at the beginning" for the whole http://www part-- AfroAssault, Nov 17 2000 wibble shall be the pronunciation i vote for, and the pronunciation i vote for shall be wibble-- djhotsauce, Dec 06 2000 §'s are Simoleans, the chief currency of the Sims. Also, I think the tilde (~) has a monopoly on "wavy" and its synonyms.-- nick_n_uit, Dec 13 2000 Wibble easily wins for me.-- goff, Feb 06 2001 i think drei vay is really cool and would catch on if people just started saying it. it does sound like 'drive a' though. i mostly just say 'dubya dubya dubya dot whatever.' 'www' is the most difficult part of a URL to say, even though it's three letters, because you say the same thing three times fast, like a tongue twister. it's a standard part of a URL, and even computer illiterate people know that 'www.' comes first. all we really need is one word or term that means 'insert www here'. i think the Italian 'tre dubya' sounds neat. i think the object is just to say it without tying your tongue in a knot.-- mr shrum, Mar 31 2001 On the subject of domain names, "www.com.com" and "www.dotcom.com" are taken. As is, to my surprise, "www.dotcomdotcom.com" .-- PotatoPete, Mar 31 2001 "The Big Dubaya" - Jimmy Durante-It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad World-- thumbwax, Apr 01 2001 Going back to the original problem of too many syllables in "WWW", the fact that each W has 3 syllables in it is the problem and would occur in the pronounciation of any spellings containing a "W".
Therefore, i think the name of the letter W should be changed entirely in the english language. Every other letter only has one syllable so why not W?-- MrKangaroo, Jul 01 2001 The smiler of the the lot is "wah-wah-waaaaa" with soft accent on the initial "wah".-- The Military, Jul 01 2001 If you say "world wide web" you get it down to three...-- futurebird, Jul 01 2001 And if you say 'wibble' it's two. And if you say 'wib' it's one.-- StarChaser, Jul 01 2001 "W": Back to three. That is so weird!-- The Military, Jul 01 2001 How about wow as in wow dot wonder dot com.-- Gopi, Jul 12 2001 Even though it's three w's we're talking about, I don't think "triple-u" would be too confusing. It has the advantage of sounding like "w". Say it a few times...
"triple-you dot boston dot com"
Say it!
It's good!
I win!-- lbjay, Jul 12 2001 What about simply inserting vowels between the double-you's to give us "wow-wow", rhyming with "bow-wow"? This should be pronounced in a deep, throaty, canine-impression way, I think, with enough volume to startle unsuspecting passers-by.
WowWow-dot-halfbarkery-dot-com? The website for half-barked ideas. (credit to futurebird and waugsqueke)-- Guy Fox, Jul 12 2001 Just call it "Tripple Charley" because it looks like Charley Brown's shirt.-- ZiZiDic, Aug 06 2001 Ok, "Three Chucks" That one's only 2 syllables-- ZiZiDic, Aug 06 2001 I think the trouble with these, and some of the earlier suggestions, Zizdic, is that their etymology is obscure, which hugely reduces their chances of adoption. Ideally, the word should not only be short, but immediately comprehended when used in context. The reason I favour "wibble" is that it already exists as a word meaning "drivel" or "verbal rubbish" and so if used when verbalising a website address, it should instantly be recognised by the listener as meaning "that jumble of letters at the beginning that never changes".-- Lemon, Aug 07 2001 I came up with "triple-u" ages ago - I always like the way it rolls right on out - familiar and also unique.-- ivaneasycheesy, Aug 08 2001 1. I normally say triple double-u.
2. Not that I'd actually say it in conversation except facetiously or to see who gets it, but triple double-u can be factorised to sextuple-u. Or u^6. Develop, with reference to ease of pronunciation.-- AllenGrace, Aug 09 2001 why even say it? why not just say blahblah.com?-- BertieWooster, Aug 09 2001 Wibble is good, but how about wippled, meaning "w tripled." That's two syllables.-- juliec2, Aug 09 2001 Taj Mahal's web address:
Dub-dub-a-doo woppa dot com bang I'm a goin googlin' how 'bout you? Dub-a-triple-dub-a-dot Watchoo find? Yeaaaah... Thank you New York! G'night everbody!-- Dog Ed, Aug 09 2001 Bertie: Because not all websites work without the wibble, and some people are so dumb they still need the 1 on a phone number, like '1 800 call foo' to tell them it's long distance.-- StarChaser, Aug 10 2001 It has to be wibble just for the fact that it looks and sounds funny.
VOTE WIBBLE!-- kaz, Aug 21 2001 Having thought deeply about this for 1 minute I have come to the conclusion that there is but one moniker which is most appropriate, which is now presented in its entirety:(drum roll)Mark Of The BeastBy explanation, In Aramaic, The numerical value of W: "Waw" = 6. A "waw" consecutive would therefore result in 666 - Which in turn translates into www.On another note: Some apocalyptic doomsayers of the biblical sort feel that the following is actually describing the various components of computers:"Thou, O king, sawest, and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before thee, and the form of it was terrible. This image's head was of fine gold, its breast and its arms of silver, its belly and its thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet part of iron and part of clay. Thou sawest until a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon its feet that were of iron and clay, and broke them to pieces. Then were the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold, broken to pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them; and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth" (Dan. 2:31-35)If I'm not mistaken - the original verses were in Aramaic.Regardless, "waw waw waw" is kind of catchy. I believe Richie Cunningham used to say it on "Happy Days" with some frequency when it aired in the '70s.-- thumbwax, Aug 23 2001 when i was a developer, i was sometimes required to deal directly with clients.... i naturally viewed this as an opportunity to have some fun, so when quoting a URL, i would say "two-root-nine-u dot foo dot com." twice the root of nine is six, and six u's make three double-u's. (ok it was funnier at the time).-- patchsavage, Sep 17 2001 waw waw waw-- thumbwax, Sep 17 2001 What is it good for?-- Lemon, Sep 17 2001 Absolutely nothing.-- Guy Fox, Sep 17 2001 Good God, y'all...-- absterge, Sep 17 2001 thumbwax: IIRC, the KJV describes the number of the beast as "six hundred, three-score, and six." How is the number actually written in the original text?-- supercat, Feb 09 2002 Around here, we use "treble-U", which is a nice play off of W (Double U) and sounds more, um, adult and professional that Wub, Wibble and Dub, etc.-- Bartlebooth, Feb 09 2002 The problem here is that term "World Wide Web". Change it to something like "Earth Encompassing Entanglement". Faster in speech and in Morse code.-- ThotMouser, May 05 2002 Great. Then we could say EEE!-- RayfordSteele, May 06 2002 I'm making a long-term prediction that this little problem will eventually lead to the re-naming of 'double-u' in the general language to something much faster.
Treble-u is nice.-- RayfordSteele, May 06 2002 In Seattle, everyone refers to the University of Washington as the "ewe dub" (UW).-- SeattleBrad, May 29 2002 Odd ... 'round here it tends to refer to the University of Western Australia.-- cp, May 29 2002 Why don't we just get rid of the w's? Maybe even the http:// and the .com, .org, .edu etc. as well. Wouldn't it be great to just type in "halfbakery" or "google" or "cnn" etc and get there (without waiting for the browser to figure out what you want)?-- utexaspunk, Sep 13 2002 If W is double U, then WWW is 6 u's, so lets just call www 'sex u', as in sex u dot halfbakery dot com-- senatorjam, Sep 13 2002 similar derivation: "hextuple-u"-- krelnik, Oct 14 2002 //Why don't we just get rid of the w's? //
Good question! When a mail server looks up "foo.com" in DNS, it asks for a special record called the "Mail Exchanger" (MX) record for foo.com. That way, the mail server for "foo.com" can be on a different address than the website "foo.com", and its all automatic.
Why don't we add a "WWW" record type to DNS just like MX? When resolving a URL, your browser would know to look up the WWW record, and boom....you don't have to type WWW anymore.-- krelnik, Oct 14 2002 In firefox you don't have to type the www, unless the site you're looking for actually has a non-www counterpart.-- Darkelfan, Nov 15 2005 sp: pronunciation, if it hasn't been pointed out before.
I'm not going to read all the above to find out.-- Texticle, Nov 15 2005 I vote for wubbawubbawubba-- energy guy, Nov 15 2005 Never seemed like too much of a bother for me... but for the sake of you poor saps complaining that you can't even give your tounge a little workout every once in a while... I'll vote for treble-u ... or "trip-u" (how I would say it if I were lazy enough.)-- SuiGenerisKitten, Nov 15 2005 I've always felt mildly sorry for Edward Woodward.-- po, Nov 15 2005 Do you know why Edward Woodward has so many ds in his name?-- calum, Nov 15 2005 no.-- po, Nov 15 2005 Because without them, he'd be Ewar Woowar?-- coprocephalous, Nov 15 2005 *rimshot*-- calum, Nov 15 2005 In France they use "Wee-wee-wee", like the noise the 3 little pigs made all the way home......
When I pointed out that this sounds like "yes-yes-yes" in French they did not agree.. apparently the vowels are slightly different.-- Minimal, Nov 15 2005 Reminds me of a charming story about some child who decided that sleshes were 'zigs' and backslashes were 'zags. Hence the phrase: "Hittip zig-a-zig wubbawubbawubba dot woppa dot com zig french."-- moomintroll, Nov 15 2005 //In France they use "Wee-wee-wee"// But in France "W" is normally pronounced "V" - but the name "double-vay" is even more of a mouthful than "double-u"-- coprocephalous, Nov 15 2005 Why not just say World Wide Web, which is only three syllables.-- Weirdo55, Nov 16 2005 I go with Steve DeGroof's idea but to shorten it to wubba instead of wubba*3.-- luxlucet, Nov 16 2005 Kill the Wibble!
Say 'triple woo' so people don't accidentally type 'uuu.foo.com' after you tell them "triple u"
With subdomains, it is easy to have "wibble.foo.com" thus destroying ubiquity.
How about "dubby dubby dub" technically five syllables but spoken in the space of three and hard to mix up with any reasonable subdomain. Immediately obvious that "www" is what is being meant.-- subflower, Nov 17 2005 this was debated on my local radio station a while back. i thought the best suggestion was to shorten 'www' to 'web'. Thus "web dot halfbakery dot com"-- tacit, Jan 26 2006 I'm sure I commented on this before, but can't find anything: I seem to remember a proposal from somewhere to pronounce the whole 'http://www.' bit as 'hitweb' (which I guess fits in with tacit's take successfully.-- yamahito, Jan 26 2006 Why not flip it? MMM. WWWdot. MMMbop. It already has a song!
Mmmbop, ba duba dop Ba du bop, ba duba dop Ba du bop, ba duba dop Ba du Yeah Mmmbop, ba duba dop Ba du bop, Ba du dop Ba du bop, Ba du dop Ba du Yeah
Oh yeah In an Mmmbop they're gone Yeah yeah-- Cube, Jan 26 2006 Somehow "Oooh" (pronounced more like ewe than owe) seems right to me. I'm not sure why. Maybe all of the U's.-- Worldgineer, Jan 26 2006 [Cube], please don't.
[Worldgineer]: like "eeeeeew!" ?-- Trickytracks, Jan 26 2006 Close, but more sexy and less gross.-- Worldgineer, Jan 26 2006 Trouble with some of these abbrev.s is that www isn't the only prefix. I've seen 'web', 'w3', 'www1', to 'www5' (I think), and of course no prefix at all (this is by no means a comprehensive or complete list). So it does become quite important to be specific in your pronounciation.-- neutrinos_shadow, Jan 26 2006 sextuple-yew.
3 doubleyews = 3 x 2 yews = 1 sextuple-yew-- DesertFox, Jan 26 2006 Just make a motor car noise with your mouth.
*bwbwbwbwbw*.halfbakery.com-- notmarkflynn, Jan 27 2006 If I want to tell a friend about this site, I'll say 'have you checked out halfbakery.com' ? I don't generally bother saying 'WWW' in any abbreviation.
Google means you don't have to rely on knowing precise web addresses so much any more. I can't remember the last time someone told me a web address letter-by-letter and I typed it in. People do give me web links via IM and email though, and I click on them. Yay.
I think if we're going for a pronunciation, I favour something short, sharp, and totally unrelated. How about 'Ni!'-- bumhat, Jan 27 2006 I think we should just not say it and let it be assumed. If it starts with something like www2, that could be added, but otherwise it might as well be skipped. I've only ever seen one site that doesn't have www or some alternate to it, but it still works if you add www.-- apocalyps956, Dec 06 2007 Sp: pronunciation
Hey, Ctrl+F reveals that I said the same thing just over 2 years ago. I'll put it in my diary for '09.-- Texticle, Dec 06 2007 One more vote for Wibble.-- 37PiecesOf Flair, Dec 06 2007 Wobbly-dot.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Dec 06 2007 Sextuple-u.-- nineteenthly, Dec 06 2007 //translated to German that would be pronounced phonetically "drei vay". So if I wanted to you to come to my page I would say "drei vay dot domain dot com". //
The Yiddish for "three" is "Oy". So in Yiddish it would be "Oy vay dot domain dot com".-- jtp, Dec 07 2007 HexV.domain.com-- Giblet, Dec 07 2007 vvvvvv.halfbakery.com : when pronounced [in case vocals are excluded], it would sound like an incantation or something of the sort 'in case your ideas are bright, don't hesitate to logon to [<1 or two seconds humming sound> dot haafbeika:ri dot com]'-- sweet, Dec 07 2007 Call it Rodney, after Dave.-- Jinbish, Dec 07 2007 random, halfbakery