Abstract. In this paper, we introduce and study the w-weak global dimension w-w.gl.dim(R) of a commutative ring R. As an application, it is shown that an integral domain R is a Prüfer v-multiplication domain if and only if w-w.gl.dim(R)1. We also show that there is a large class of domains in which Hilbert's syzygy Theorem for the w-weak global dimension does not hold. Namely, we prove that if R is an integral domain (but not a field) for which the polynomial ring R[x] is w-coherent, then w-w.gl.dim(R[x]) = w-w.gl.dim(R).