Bits

How to spell bits

4 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce bits

What does bits mean?

1. nounSmall pieces, portions, or amounts of something.
2. nounThe smallest units of digital information, each representing a binary value of zero or one.

Bits in a sentence

• She swept the broken bits of glass into the dustpan.

• The file size is measured in millions of bits per second.

• He saved the leftover bits of fabric for a future project.

• Each colour in the image is encoded using eight bits.

Where does bits come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is the plural of 'bit', which descends from the Old English 'bita', meaning 'a piece bitten off' or 'a mouthful', closely tied to the verb 'bitan', 'to bite'. From that literal sense of something nipped away, the meaning broadened to any small portion or fragment, which is why a 'bit' can today be a scrap of food, a short span of time, or a small role in a play. A separate technical use arose in the 1940s when the American statistician John Tukey coined 'bit' as a contraction of 'binary digit', the smallest unit of computer information. Because both threads end in the same little Germanic word, the modern plural 'bits' covers everything from crumbs on a plate to gigabytes of data. The spelling is mercifully phonetic, so the only real care needed is the doubled 't' that the short 'i' demands before the plural ending.

How the word is built

• bit (small piece; also binary digit)
• -s (plural)