lexicow

domain

/doʊˈmeɪn//dəˈmeɪn/·noun
I watch the knight stand on its square, and all at once the squares it could spring to light up around it — that crooked L thrown in every direction, the ground it commands from right here. Then it leaps to one of them; the old lights die and a new set kindles from where it lands, fewer this time, a different shape. The board never changed. Only the piece moved, and its whole reach picked up and went with it.
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Definition

A domain is the field over which someone or something holds sway — a sphere of rule, of expertise, or of a whole discipline. It is marked off from the world outside its boundary; close to realm, but wider in everyday use, it can name a monarch's lands, a branch of science, or any defined scope of control. Online it has a narrower technical sense: the named address a website lives at. The constant is a bounded territory that belongs to, or is governed by, one thing.

Examples

  • Statistics lies outside her domain, so she defers to colleagues who can scrutinize the data properly.
  • Each specialist works within a narrow domain and rarely strays past its edge.
  • Online, a single misspelled domain name can send your visitors somewhere else entirely.

Collocations

the public domain·outside my domain·a domain of knowledge·the domain of experts·in the digital domain

Synonyms

field·sphere·realm·territory·province

Word family

dominion (noun)

In TOEFL & IELTS

Common across academic writing for 'a field of study or activity' ('the domain of economics'). Note the senses: area of expertise, a ruler's territory, the legal 'public domain', and the web address. US stress and vowel differ slightly from UK. Trap: don't blur it with 'dominion' (rule or control itself).