bit

A piece of metal placed in a horse's mouth and connected to the reins to direct the animal.

Adjective

  1. Having been bitten.
    • Even though he's bit, of course the zombies would still chase him.
    • Fortunately, someone who gets skeeter-bit this much may develop an immunity to the skeeter's saliva - 1984 July, Field & Stream, volume 89, number 3, page 24:
    • 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 - 1992, Robert Lewis...

Origin

See bite. Replaced a former strong past tense, seen in Middle English bot and Old English bāt.

Derived

dogbit snakebit

Noun Entry 2

  1. A piece of metal placed in a horse's mouth and connected to the reins to direct the animal.
    • A horse hates having a bit put in its mouth.

    Synonyms: kimberwicke pelham snaffle

  2. A rotary cutting tool, fitted to a drill, brace, or router, used to bore or drill holes or to remove material from the profile of the workpiece.
    • router bit
    • chamfering bit
  3. Applied to a various small units of currency and coins.
    • a threepenny bit

    Synonyms: coin piece

    1. (dated, UK) A coin of a specified value.

    2. (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.
      • He left after shaking her down for four bits for carrying the bags. - 1966 March, Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, New York, N.Y.: Bantam Books, published November 1976, →ISBN, page 16:

      Synonyms: coin piece

    3. (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.

      • 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...

      Synonyms: coin piece

    4. (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.

      • 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. - 1789, Olaudah...

      Synonyms: coin piece

    5. (historical) A unit of currency of the Dutch West Indies in the early 20th century, worth one fifth of a cent.

      Synonyms: coin piece

    6. Synonym of microbitcoin.

      Synonyms: coin piece microbitcoin

  4. A small amount of something.
    • 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.

    Synonyms: morsel piece scrap ace atom atomy aught bissel bit crumb glimpse dab damn dash diddly glint dot spatter drop dusting fleck glimmer hint flip

  5. Specifically, a small amount of time.
    • 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.

    Synonyms: instant jiffy tick bat of an eye bit blink of an eye crack eyeblink flash glimpse half a mo jiff jot minute mo moment New York minute New York second no time sec second span split-second spurt

    Antonyms: age while aeon ages blue moon coon's age crow's age dog's age donkey's years eld eon eternity forever forever and a day interim interlude interval lifetime long haul long run meantime minute month of Sundays spell

  6. A small fraction above a whole number.
    • The movie lasted for two and a bit hours.
  7. Fractions of a second.
    • The 400 metres race was won in 47 seconds and bits.

    Synonyms: split-second

  8. A portion of something.
    • I'd like a big bit of cake, please.
    • 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...

    Synonyms: portion share segment bit chip chunk clip crumb crumbling cutting flake fleak fragment hunk lump mammock ort piece piecemeal scrap scraplet slice snead snippet

  9. 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!
    • My young companion was a bit of a poet. - 1835, Theodore Hook, Gilbert Gurney:
  10. A replaceable tip for a hand tool or power tool, comprising the portion that drives a fastener.
    • Near-synonym: driver
    • driver bit

    Synonyms: driver

  11. A prison sentence, especially a short one.
    • 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 - 1904, The Anamosa prison press, volume 7, Iowa. Colony of Detention at Anamosa:
    • 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...
    • 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. - 1994, Odie...

    Synonyms: bid

  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.

Origin

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.

Forms

bits

Related

bits

Derived

a bit a fair bit a little bit a little bit of bread and no cheese a lot of bit a wee bit behind the bit bergy bit bit and bit bit-banger bit between one's teeth bit-bucket bit bucket bit by bit bit-faker bitless bit lifter bitling bit of all right bit of alright bit of crumpet bit of fluff bit of homework bit of muslin

Noun computing, engineering

  1. A binary digit, generally represented as a 1 or 0.
  2. The smallest unit of storage in a digital computer, consisting of a binary digit.

    Synonyms: b

  3. Any datum that may take on one of exactly two values.
    • status bits on IRC
    • permission bits in a file system
  4. A unit of measure for information entropy.
    • 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,...
  5. A microbitcoin, or a millionth of a bitcoin (0.000001 BTC).

Origin

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

Forms

bits

Hyponyms

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

Related

ban nat qubit

Derived

128-bit 16-bit 32-bit 64-bit 7-bit 8-bit ancilla bit bit array bitarray bit banging bit bashing bitboard bitcent bit-compressed bit-count integrity bit crusher bit decay bit-depth bit depth biter bitfield bitfilter bitflag bitflip

Verb form of, past

  1. simple past of bite
    • Your dog bit me!
  2. past participle of bite, bitten
    • I've been bit by your dog!

Verb Entry 5

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

Forms

bits bitting bitted