AI tools

bit

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

See also: Bit, B.I.T., -bit-, bít, bịt, and bɨt
Languages (33)
English
Azerbaijani • Catalan • Cumbric • Czech • Dutch • French • Hungarian • Indonesian • Italian • Karaim • Khalaj • Lashi • Lower Sorbian • Nigerian Pidgin • North Frisian • Norwegian Bokmål • Norwegian Nynorsk • Old English • Old Irish • Polish • Portuguese • Romanian • Saterland Frisian • Scots • Serbo-Croatian • Slavomolisano • Spanish • Swedish • Turkish • Turkmen • Vietnamese • Zhuang
Page categories

English

English Wikipedia has an article on:
Wikipedia
snaffle bit (1)
drill bit (2)
key bit (15)

Pronunciation

  • enPR: bĭt, IPA(key): /bɪt/
  • Audio (US):(file)
  • Rhymes: -ɪt

Etymology 1

From Middle English bitte, bite, from Old English bita (“bit; fragment; morsel”) and bite (“a bite; cut”), from Proto-Germanic *bitô and *bitiz; both from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeyd- (“to split”). More at bite.

Cognates

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.

Noun

bit (plural bits)

  2. A piece of metal placed in a horse's mouth and connected to the reins to direct the animal.
    Synonyms: kimberwicke, pelham, snaffle
    A horse hates having a bit put in its mouth.
  3. A rotary cutting tool fitted to a drill, used to bore holes.
  4. Applied to a various small units of currency and coins.
    Synonyms: coin, piece
    1. (dated, British) A coin of a specified value.
      a threepenny bit
    3. (historical, US and Canada) A unit of currency worth one eighth of a dollar, originally of a Spanish dollar but later also US or Canadian; also, a coin with this value, in particular the silver Spanish real.
      A quarter is two bits.
    4. (obsolete, US and Canada) A coin of a value similar but not equal to this, in particular the ‘short bit’, i.e. the ten-cent piece or dime.
      • 1941, Emily Carr, chapter 10, in Klee Wyck‎:
        The smallest coin we had in Canada in early days was a dime, worth ten cents. The Indians called this coin “a Bit”. Our next coin, double in buying power and in size, was a twenty-five cent piece and this the Indians called “Two Bits”.
    5. (historical) A unit of currency and coin of the British West Indies worth six black dogs, originally equal to one-eighth of a Spanish dollar but later increasingly debased to one tenth, one eleventh, one twelfth, etc.
      • 1789, Olaudah Equiano, chapter 6, in The Interesting Narrative, volume I:
        I trusted to the Lord to be with me; and at one of our trips to St. Eustatia, a Dutch island, I bought a glass tumbler with my half bit, and when I came to Montserrat I sold it for a bit, or sixpence.
    6. (historical) A unit of currency of the Dutch West Indies in the early 20th century, worth one fifth of a cent.
    7. Synonym of microbitcoin.
  5. A small amount of something.
    Synonyms: (of food) morsel, piece, scrap; see also Thesaurus:modicum
    There were bits of paper all over the floor.
    Does your leg still hurt? —Just a bit now.
    I've done my bit; I expect you to do yours.
  6. (informal) Specifically, a small amount of time.
    Synonyms: instant, jiffy, tick; see also Thesaurus:moment
    Antonyms: age, (US) while; see also Thesaurus:eon
    I'll be there in a bit; I need to take care of something first.
    He was here just a bit ago, but it looks like he's stepped out.
  7. (informal) A small fraction above a whole number.
    The movie lasted for two and a bit hours.
  8. (in the plural, informal, sports) Fractions of a second.
    Synonym: split-second
    The 400 metres race was won in 47 seconds and bits.
  9. A portion of something.
    Synonyms: portion, share, segment; see also Thesaurus:piece
    I'd like a big bit of cake, please.
    • 2013 July-August, Catherine Clabby, “Focus on Everything”, in American Scientist:
      Not long ago, it was difficult to produce photographs of tiny creatures with every part in focus. […] A photo processing technique called focus stacking has changed that. Developed as a tool to electronically combine the sharpest bits of multiple digital images, focus stacking is a boon to biologists seeking full focus on a micron scale.
  10. Somewhat; something, but not very great; also used like jot and whit to express the smallest degree. See also a bit.
    Am I bored? Not a bit of it!
    • 1835', Theodore Hook, Gilbert Gurney
      My young companion was a bit of a poet.
  11. (slang) A prison sentence, especially a short one.
    Synonym: bid
    • 1904, The Anamosa prison press, volume 7, Iowa. Colony of Detention at Anamosa:
      Had it not been for the influence of Mrs. Booth and Hope Hall I should still be grafting or doing a bit in some stir
    • 1916, Thomas Mott Osborne. Warden, Sing Sing Prison, N. Y., “Prison Reform”, in The Journal of sociologic medicine, volume 17, page 407:
      Before doing that I am going to tell you what was the result of my own incarceration, because I presume it may not be a secret to you, that I have done a "bit" myself, not the "bit" which the prosecuting attorney was so anxious to have me do.
    • 1994, Odie Hawkins, Lost Angeles, page 158:
      Chino didn't make me think of Dachau or that notorious joint in Angola, Louisiana, where a brother who had done a bit there told me how they used to cut the grass on the front lawn with their fingernails.
    • 2001, Andrew H. Vachss, Pain management:
      Not counting the days—that's okay for a county-time slap, but it'll make you crazy if you've got years to go on a felony bit.
  12. An excerpt of material making up part of a show, comedy routine, etc.
    His bit about video games was not nearly as entertaining as the other segments of his show.
  13. (slang) A gag or put-on; a humorous conceit, especially when insistently presented as true.
    Synonyms: shaggy dog story, wind up; see also Thesaurus:joke
    Are you serious, or is this a bit?
    • 2024 March 1, F1NN5TER, 3:36 from the start, in Coming Out‎, archived from the original on 14 May 2024:
      Also, I'm bi. I like dudes! ...That's weird to say. Everything I say feels like a bit now, god dammit.
  14. Short for bit part.
    She acted her bit in the opening scene.
  16. The part of a key which enters the lock and acts upon the bolt and tumblers.[1]
  17. The cutting iron of a plane.[2]
  18. The bevelled front edge of an axehead along which the cutting edge runs.
  19. (BDSM) A gag of a style similar to a bridle.
  20. (MLE) A gun.
    Synonyms: (MLE) skeng, toy, wap; see also Thesaurus:firearm
    • 2013 December 23, Stephen Reynolds, 46:53 from the start, in Stephen Reynolds, director, Vendetta (film), spoken by Jimmy Vickers (Danny Dyer):
      Jimmy: I need to get my hands on some bits. If you’re still in the business.
      Ronnie (played by Nick Nevern): Oi!
      Trojan (played by Jean-Paul Van Cauwelaert): Ronnie.
      […]
      Trojan: Now that is a SIG Sauer P226.
Derived terms
  • bits (“genitals”)
Translations
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

Verb

bit (third-person singular simple present bits, present participle bitting, simple past and past participle bitted)

  1. (transitive) To put a bridle upon; to put the bit in the mouth of (a horse).

References

  1. [1]
    Edward H[enry] Knight (1877) “Bit”, in Knight’s American Mechanical Dictionary. […], volumes I (A–GAS), New York, N.Y.: Hurd and Houghton […], →OCLC.
  2. [2]
    Edward H[enry] Knight (1877) “Bit”, in Knight’s American Mechanical Dictionary. […], volumes I (A–GAS), New York, N.Y.: Hurd and Houghton […], →OCLC.

Etymology 2

See bite

Verb

bit

  1. simple past of bite
    Your dog bit me!
  2. (informal in US, archaic in UK) past participle of bite, bitten
    I have been bit by your dog!

Adjective

bit (not comparable)

  1. (chiefly in combination) Having been bitten.
    Even though he's bit, of course the zombies would still chase him.
    • 1984 July, Field & Stream, volume 89, number 3, page 24:
      Fortunately, someone who gets skeeter-bit this much may develop an immunity to the skeeter's saliva
    • 1992, Robert Lewis Taylor, The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters‎:
      Only the year before, the conjure man had brought in the Jackson County madstone, from way over in Illinois, for a white peddler that had been dog-bit, and the man went ahead and died just the same
    • 1998, Adele Griffin, Rainy Season‎, page 121:
      He will not — he'll tell you not to be loco, climbing up trees late at night when you'll get bug-bit to death plus you can't see anything
Derived terms

Etymology 3

Coined by John Tukey in 1946 as an abbreviation of binary digit, probably influenced by connotations of “small portion”.[1][2] First used in print 1948 by Claude Shannon.[3] Compare byte and nybble, with similar food associations.

Noun

bit (plural bits)

  2. (mathematics, computing) A binary digit, generally represented as a 1 or 0.
  4. (computing) The smallest unit of storage in a digital computer, consisting of a binary digit.
    Synonym: b
  6. (information theory, cryptography) Any datum that may take on one of exactly two values.
    status bits on IRC
    permission bits in a file system
  7. (information theory) A unit of measure for information entropy.
    • 2011 May 17, Lisa Grossman, “Entropy Is Universal Rule of Language”, in Wired Science‎, retrieved 2012-09-26:
      The researchers found that the original texts spanned a variety of entropy values in different languages, reflecting differences in grammar and structure.
      But strangely, the difference in entropy between the original, ordered text and the randomly scrambled text was constant across languages. This difference is a way to measure the amount of information encoded in word order, Montemurro says. The amount of information lost when they scrambled the text was about 3.5 bits per word.
  8. A microbitcoin, or a millionth of a bitcoin (0.000001 BTC).
Hyponyms
Derived terms
Translations
The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
See also

References

  1. [1]
    “Six Receive Honorary Degrees at Princeton Commencement”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name)‎, (Can we date this quote?), archived from the original on 2002-02-09
  2. [2]
    (Please provide the book title or journal name)‎, 2007 March 23 (last accessed), archived from the original on 3 March 2007
  3. [3]
    Claude Shannon (1948 July) “A Mathematical Theory of Communication”, in The Bell System Technical Journal, →DOI

Anagrams

Azerbaijani

Catalan

Cumbric

Czech

Dutch

French

Hungarian

Indonesian

Italian

Karaim

Khalaj

Lashi

Lower Sorbian

Nigerian Pidgin

North Frisian

Norwegian Bokmål

Norwegian Nynorsk

Old English

Old Irish

Polish

Portuguese

Romanian

Saterland Frisian

Scots

Serbo-Croatian

Slavomolisano

Spanish

Swedish

Turkish

Turkmen

Vietnamese

Zhuang

Wikiwand - on

Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.