bit

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   A small amount or piece of something.

   There were bits of paper all over the floor.

2. 2
   noun

   A short amount of time.

   I'll be there in a bit; I just need to finish this.

3. 3
   noun

   A small tool that fits into a drill to make holes.

   He fixed a new bit into the drill before starting.

4. 4
   noun

   A metal bar placed in a horse's mouth to control it.

   The horse hates having the bit put in its mouth.

Appears in

Simplified etymology

Bit in its older sense belongs to the same word family as bite and bitter, whose common ancestor probably meant “to split” or “to cleave.” The computing sense has a separate modern formation: bit is a contraction of binary digit, a unit represented by either 0 or 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.

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External links

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• Cambridge Dictionary
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