bit bucket

Meanings

Noun

• A container for holding chad from paper tape or punch cards used with teleprinters, early computers, and other machines; a chad box.
• The supposed place where bits (binary digits) go when they fall off the end of a register during a shift operation; the notional resting place of lost or missing digital information.

Verb

• To delete.

Origin

• The noun is derived from bit + bucket. Bit in this context originally referred to small pieces of paper punched out from paper tape or punch cards (see sense 1), but came to be regarded as the unit of data storage (sense 2).
• The verb is derived from the noun.