Dark Web
Etymology
The related term “darknet” appeared in a 2002 paper by Microsoft researchers describing networks meant to hide activity; the “dark web” sense grew with anonymity tools like Tor in the late 2000s. It is often confused with the “deep web,” which simply means anything not indexed by search engines, such as your email inbox. The dark web is a small, deliberately hidden slice of that larger unindexed space.
noun phrase · /dark web/
The portion of the internet reachable only through special anonymizing software, hosting sites hidden from ordinary search.
What it names
The intentionally concealed layer of the web, separating it from the merely unindexed.
Example
Reporters accessed the dark web through Tor to reach a whistleblower’s anonymous drop site.
Related idea
The dark web is deliberately hidden and requires special software, whereas the “deep web” is merely everything search engines do not index — most of it mundane, like private databases.
See also