Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun A unit of data equal to eight bits. Computer memory is often expressed in megabytes or gigabytes.
- noun A set of bits constituting the smallest unit of addressable memory in a given computer, typically eight bits.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun computing A
sequence ofadjacent bits (binary digits) that can beoperated on as aunit by acomputer ; the smallest usable machine word; nearly always eight bits, which canrepresent aninteger from 0 to 255 or a single character of text. - noun computing A unit of computing storage equal to eight bits
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a sequence of 8 bits (enough to represent one character of alphanumeric data) processed as a single unit of information
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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"The name is allegedly based on Jobs' favorite fruit and the logo chosen to play on both the company name and the word byte."
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The bite out of its side was a play on the word "byte" and kept it from being confused with a tomato.
Gizmodo Brian Lam 2011
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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.
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Whereas a digital byte is mostly 8 binary digits, a DNA byte (called a codon) has three digits.
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That byte is much more taxing than a byte coming from an uber-server that is one hop from the backbone.
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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 2008
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By what might be called a byte-by-byte leadership style.
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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 '.
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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."
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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."
whichbe commented on the word byte
A contraction of 'by eight.'
May 7, 2008
seanahan commented on the word byte
Answers gives a different etymology.
May 7, 2008