Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A sequence of adjacent bits, usually eight, operated on as a unit by a computer.
Wiktionary
- n. computing A sequence of adjacent bits (binary digits) that can be operated on as a unit by a computer; the smallest usable machine word; nearly always eight bits, which can represent an integer from 0 to 255 or a single character of text.
- n. computing A unit of computing storage equal to eight bits
WordNet 3.0
- n. a sequence of 8 bits (enough to represent one character of alphanumeric data) processed as a single unit of information
Etymologies
- Expansion of bit, coined by Dr. Werner Buchholz in July 1956, during the early design phase for the IBM Stretch computer. (Wiktionary)
- Alteration and blend of bit3 and bite. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“The bite out of its side was a play on the word "byte" and kept it from being confused with a tomato.”
“The name is allegedly based on Jobs' favorite fruit and the logo chosen to play on both the company name and the word byte.”
“Now every little bit and byte is potentially dissected and analyzed meaning a comment on a blog can impact relationships in communities, at work, etc.”
“Whereas a digital byte is mostly 8 binary digits, a DNA byte (called a codon) has three digits.”
“That byte is much more taxing than a byte coming from an uber-server that is one hop from the backbone.”
“Sure it’s all little in byte size, but when you add up the numbers, I’m sure that’s Gbits of bandwidth that could be utilized more efficiently.”
EXTRALIFE – By Scott Johnson - Sometimes this site gets crazy spam
“By what might be called a byte-by-byte leadership style.”
“Currently, the complex series of ones and zeroes that move at high speed through millions of miles of cables and airwaves are treated equally -- a byte is a byte is a byte, whether yours, mine or Bill Gates '.”
“And it's hard for me to talk about it in, you know, in a seven or eight minute sound byte, which is why I haven't done television on it, with one exception which was "48 Hours.”
“A byte is a unit of storage than can contain any number from 0 through 255 -- 256 values in all.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘byte’.
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SCIE - statistics
Abbe-Helmert crit..., a priori probability, alphabet, total correlation, three-dimensional..., theoretical frequ..., time reversal test, three-series theorem, theoretical variable, tetrachoric corre..., absolutely unbias..., absolute error and 4171 more...
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Words of Tomorrow
Futuristic words for the atomic age!
laser, nuclear, clone, zephyr, byte, jetpack, android, bot, shatner, vulcan, voltron, nano
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Twitter favourites
The new favourite words of people on Twitter.
A script searches Twitter for "X is my new favourite word" and adds it to this list.
See also:
bumwank, calamity, recalcitrant, gayenese, jeeze, nonsense, flabbergasted, juxtapose, procrastinating, ossanity, biffing, loser and 1972 more... -
Programming
class, function, method, instance, value, variable, boolean, if, else, while, for, elseif and 95 more...
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aozuas's Words
sense data, hyperreality, brouhaha, ibid, apophenia, fnord, lackadaisical, schadenfreude, bildungsroman, ready-made, readymade, tergiversar and 654 more...
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the hotlist
short, sweet, epic, catchy, sassy, sexy & sizzling.
( personal list, randomness )
more:
http://www.wordnik.com/lists/...zing, epic, win, fail, hot, warp, times, clip, onyx, wonky, pwn, leet and 1493 more...
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Computers
ajax, bit, byte, java, keyboard, c, html, flash, javascript, ram, rom, round robin and 5 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for byte.
seanahan Answers gives a different etymology. May 7, 2008
whichbe A contraction of 'by eight.' May 6, 2008