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domainist /doh-mayn'ist/ adj.
1. [Usenet, by pointed analogy with "sexist", "racist", etc.] Someone who judges people by the domain of their email addresses; esp. someone who dismisses anyone who posts from a public internet provider. "What do you expect from an article posted from aol.com?" 2. Said of an [Internet address] (as opposed to a [bang path]) because the part to the right of the @ specifies a nested series of `domains'; for example, esr@snark.thyrsus.com specifies the machine called snark in the subdomain called thyrsus within the top-level domain called com. See also [big-endian], sense 2.
The meaning of this term has drifted. At one time sense 2 was primary. In elder days it was also used of a site, mailer, or routing program which knew how to handle domainist addresses; or of a person (esp. a site admin) who preferred domain addressing, supported a domainist mailer, or proselytized for domainist addressing and disdained [bang path]s. These senses are now (1996) obsolete, as effectively all sites have converted.