English
bit
Pronunciation Noun

bit (plural bits)

  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.
  2. A rotary cutting tool fitted to a drill, used to bore holes.
  3. (dated, British) A coin of a specified value. (Also formerly used for a nine-pence coin in the British Caribbean, and a fourpenny piece, or groat, in the British West Indies.)
    a threepenny bit
  4. (obsolete, Canada) A ten-cent piece, dime.
    • 1941, Emily Carr, Klee Wyck, Chapter 10,
      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. (US) An eighth of a dollar. Note that there is no coin minted worth 12.5 cents. (When this term first came into use, the Spanish 8 reales coin was widely used as a dollar equivalent, and thus the 1 real coin was equivalent to 12.5 cents.)
    A quarter is two bits.
  6. (historical, US) In the southern and southwestern states, a small silver coin (such as the real) formerly current; commonly, one worth about 12½ cents; also, the sum of 12½ cents.
  7. 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.
  8. (informal) 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.
  9. (plural, informal, sports) Fractions of a second.
    The 400 metres race was won in 47 seconds and bits.
  10. A portion of something.
    I'd like a big bit of cake, please.
  11. 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!
    • T. Hook
      My young companion was a bit of a poet.
  12. (slang) A prison sentence, especially a short one.
  13. anchor An excerpt of material 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.
  14. The part of a key which enters the lock and acts upon the bolt and tumblers.
  15. The cutting iron of a plane.
  16. The bevelled front edge of an axehead along which the cutting edge runs.
Synonyms Translations Translations Translations
  • German: Bit
  • Italian: ottavo di dollaro
  • Spanish: octavo de dólar
Translations Translations Translations Verb

bit (bits, present participle bitting; past and past participle bitted)

  1. (transitive) To put a bridle upon; to put the bit in the mouth of (a horse).
Verb
  1. simple past tense of bite
    Your dog bit me!
  2. (informal in US, archaic in UK) past participle of bite#English|bite, bitten
    I have been bit by your dog!
Adjective

bit (not comparable)

  1. (colloquial) bitten.
    Even though he's bit, of course the zombies would still chase him.
  2. (only in combination) Having been bitten.
Noun

bit (plural bits)

  1. (mathematics, computing) A binary digit, generally represented as a 1 or 0.
  2. (computing) The smallest unit of storage in a digital computer, consisting of a binary digit.
    Synonyms: b
  3. (information theory, cryptography) Any datum that may take on one of exactly two values.
    status bits on IRC
    permission bits in a file system
  4. (information theory) 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, 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.
  5. A microbitcoin, or a millionth of a bitcoin (0.000001 BTC).
Translations
  • French: bit
  • German: Bit
  • Portuguese: bit
  • Russian: бит
  • Spanish: binio
Translations
  • German: Bit
  • Portuguese: bit
  • Russian: бит
  • Spanish: binio
Translations
  • German: Bit
  • Portuguese: bit
  • Spanish: binio


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