deactivation

The process of removing a domain name from the zone files of the top-level domains. When a domain name is deactivated, the Domain Name System (DNS) will no longer have the information needed to resolve the domain name to its corresponding Internet Protocol number (IP number), effectively disabling that domain name as a tool for locating the related Web sites. InterNIC refers to this status as being "on hold," though, because the domain name record remains in InterNIC's domain name database.