byte

American  

[bahyt] / baɪt /

noun

Computers.

1. adjacent bits, usually eight, processed by a computer as a unit.

2. the combination of bits used to represent a particular letter, number, or special character.

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byte British  

/ baɪt /

noun

1. a group of bits, usually eight, processed as a single unit of data

2. the storage space in a memory or other storage device that is allocated to such a group of bits

3. a subdivision of a word

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byte Scientific  

/ bīt /

1. A sequence of adjacent bits operated on as a unit by a computer. A byte usually consists of eight bits. Amounts of computer memory are often expressed in terms of megabytes (1,048,576 bytes) or gigabytes (1,073,741,824 bytes).

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byte Cultural  

1. In computer technology, a unit of information made up of bits (often eight bits). The memory capacity of a typical personal computer runs from millions to billions of bytes.

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Usage

The word bit is short for binary digit. A bit consists of one of two values, usually 0 or 1. Computers use bits because their system of counting is based on two options: switches on a microchip that are either on or off. Thus, a computer counts to seven in bits as follows: 0, 1, 10 [2], 11 [3], 100 [4], 101 [5], 110 [6], 111 [7]. Notice that the higher the count, the more adjacent bits are needed to represent the number. For example, it requires two adjacent bits to count from 0 to 3, and it takes three adjacent bits to count from 0 to 7. A sequence of bits can represent not just numbers but other kinds of data, such as the letters and symbols on a keyboard. The sequence of 0s and 1s that make up data are usually counted in groups of 8, and these groups of 8 bits are called bytes. In origin byte is simply a respelling of bite, a byte being the number of bits that a computer can take at one bite, so to speak. The spelling change was intended to avoid confusion in written documents, since bite becomes identical to bit if the e at the end of bite is accidentally dropped. To transmit one keystroke on a typical keyboard requires one byte of information (or 8 bits). To transmit a three-letter word requires three bytes of information (or 24 bits).

Etymology

Origin of byte

First recorded in 1959; origin uncertain

Explanation

A byte is a term for a unit of measurement on a computer. If you own a computer, then it's likely that it holds at least a byte of memory. Byte might refer to a unit of information or of storage space on a computer. Many computer operations involve a certain amount of bytes working per second or per minute. The word byte is related to another computer term, a bit, which is an even smaller piece of information; eight bits form one byte. The related words megabyte and gigabyte both have a whole lot of bytes — and even more bits.

Example Sentences

He included the bite mark for scale to set the apple apart from similar round fruit like cherries -- learning only later it was a homonym for the computer term "byte".

From Barron's • Mar. 29, 2026

He was a darling of business journalists because of his accessibility and willingness to give a quick byte or quote, and his views were much sought after.

From BBC • Dec. 29, 2022

The reality, they patiently say, is more nuanced and complicated than a tweet or a talk-radio sound byte.

From Seattle Times • Nov. 12, 2021

On Tuesday, Ramsay took to Instagram to share a sound byte from Steve Allen’s recent LBC Radio program in which he fielded a viewer question about her being on "Celebrity Master Chef Australia."

From Fox News • Oct. 20, 2021

The atom, the byte, and the gene provide fundamentally new scientific and technological understandings of their respective systems.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee