English

Alternative forms

• Silicone Valley (erroneous and archaic; see the Wikipedia article)

Proper noun

Silicon Valley

1. A nickname originally for the region of the San Francisco Bay Area in which there are a high number of industries producing silicon chips and later extended to mean the entire concentration of high-tech businesses in this area.
   • 2013 July 20, “The attack of the MOOCs”, in The Economist, volume 408, number 8845:

     Since the launch early last year of Udacity and Coursera, two Silicon Valley start-ups offering free education through MOOCs, massive open online courses, the ivory towers of academia have been shaken to their foundations. University brands built in some cases over centuries have been forced to contemplate the possibility that information technology will rapidly make their existing business model obsolete.

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

See also

• A comprehensive list of "Siliconia", place names modelled on "Silicon Valley" (Note: these place names are of varying degrees of currency and so have not been copied into the lists of derived and related terms above)