bit

Meanings

Noun

• A piece of metal placed in a horse's mouth and connected to the reins to direct the animal.
• A rotary cutting tool fitted to a drill, used to bore holes.
• A coin of a specified value.
• A ten-cent piece, dime.
• A unit of currency or coin in the Americas worth a fraction of a Spanish dollar; now specifically, an eighth of a US dollar.
• In the southern and southwestern states, a small silver coin (such as the real) formerly current; commonly, one worth about 12½ cents; also, the sum of 12½ cents.
• A small amount of something.
• Specifically, a small amount of time.
• Fractions of a second.
• A portion of something.
• Somewhat; something, but not very great; also used like jot and whit to express the smallest degree. See also a bit.
• A prison sentence, especially a short one.
• An excerpt of material making up part of a show, comedy routine, etc.
• The part of a key which enters the lock and acts upon the bolt and tumblers.
• The cutting iron of a plane.
• The bevelled front edge of an axehead along which the cutting edge runs.
• A binary digit, generally represented as a 1 or 0.
• The smallest unit of storage in a digital computer, consisting of a binary digit.
• Any datum that may take on one of exactly two values.
• A unit of measure for information entropy.
• A microbitcoin, or a millionth of a bitcoin (0.000001 BTC).

Verb

• Past of bite
• , bitten

Adjective

• Having been bitten.

Related

Similar words

• coin, piece
• morsel , piece, scrap
• portion, share, segment
• snaffle, pelham, kimberwicke
• bid

Narrower meaning words

• hidden bit
• high-order bit
• least significant bit
• most significant bit
• qubit

Origin

• From Middle English bitte, bite, from Old English bita and bite, from Proto-Germanic *bitô and *bitiz; both from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeyd-.
• Cognate with West Frisian bit, Saterland Frisian Bit, Dutch bit, German Low German Beet, Biet, German Biss and Bissen, Danish bid, Swedish bit, Icelandic biti.
• See bite
• as an abbreviation of binary digit, probably influenced by connotations of “small portion”. First used in print 1948 by Claude Shannon.{{cite-journal
• |author=Claude Shannon
• |authorlink=Claude Shannon
• |year=1948
• |month=July
• |work=The Bell System Technical Journal
• |doi=10.1002/j.1538-7305.1948.tb01338.x
• Compare byte and nybble, with similar food associations.