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dot com company

dot com company

1 3.5
A business that does most of its work online and uses a website ending in .com
  • noun
  • /dɑt kɑm ˈkʌmpəni/
  • Texting
translation icon : empresa dot com

Examples

  • The funny thing is, we only gave those dot com companies.

    Blog text (2)
  • I run my own dot-com company that sells products exclusively online.

  • Many dot-com companies emerged during the internet boom of the late 1990s.

  • She invested in a dot-com company because she believed in the future of online shopping.

Synonyms

dot com
vsdot com company
  • Texting
7 3.7

A company that does most of its business on the internet with a website ending in .com

is the general term for businesses that conduct most trade via the internet
dot-com
vsdot com company
  • Texting
6 4.2

A company that does most of its business online, often with a website ending in .com

is the preferred modern form without hyphen and same basic meaning
.com
vsdot com company
  • Texting
3.6

A company that works mainly on the internet

is broader covering internet firms of any age or size not only startups

How Online

dot com company
  • Texting
1 3.5
e-commerce
  • Texting
2 3.3
off-line
  • Specialized
2 3.1

Surface Forms

Morphology

dot + com + company

The meaning is directly compositional: 'dot' + 'com' signals the .com internet domain and 'company' names the organization, so a learner who knows the constituent words can infer a firm operating via a .com presence. This is a widely used, cross-linguistically transparent calque (often heard as 'dot-com company'), so the sense is immediately recognizable rather than idiomatic.

Etymology

The noun dot com company comes from website names that end in dot com, where 'com' stood for 'commercial'. That's why the phrase now refers to a company that does most of its business on the 'web'.