hypertext
noun
Did you know?
Since hyper- generally means "above, beyond", hypertext is something that's gone beyond the limitations of ordinary text. Thus, unlike the text in a book, hypertext permits you, by clicking with a mouse, to immediately access text in one of millions of different electronic sources. Hypertext is now so familiar that most computer users may not even know the word, which was coined by Ted Nelson back in the early 1960s. It took a few more years for hypertext to actually be created, by Douglas Engelbart, and then quite a few more years before the introduction of the World Wide Web in 1991.
Examples of hypertext in a Sentence
Sneha Dhandapani, CNN Money, 6 June 2026
Obviously, the users can also opt for surfing’s rapid digressions due to the overwhelming and disorienting number of choices that they are confronted with when accessing a hypertext.
—Carmen Daniela Maier, Encyclopedia Britannica, 26 May 2026
Berners-Lee’s more pragmatic idea was to use hypertext to enhance online collaboration.
—Julian Lucas, New Yorker, 29 Sep. 2025
The Memex was the prophetic prototype of hypertext, personal knowledge augmentation, and linked information systems.
—Amir Husain, Forbes.com, 27 June 2025
Perhaps that’s because most histories of the Internet focus on technical innovations: packet switching, dynamic routing, addressing, and hypertext, for example.
—IEEE Spectrum, 24 Oct. 2016
Cite this Entry
“Hypertext.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypertext. Accessed 23 Jun. 2026.
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hypertext
noun
