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

Narrower meaning words

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.

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