Byte Meaning
/baɪt/Definition, CEFR level C1, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
nounA short sequence of bits (binary digits) that can be operated on as a unit by a computer; the smallest usable machine word.
nounA unit of computing storage equal to eight bits, which can represent any of 256 distinct values.
Sentence Examples
A standard byte is eight bits.
A typical byte is eight bits, meaning eight 1s and 0s.
CEFR Practice Quiz
A single character of text typically takes up one ____ in memory.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
A ____ is a unit of digital information that consists of eight bits.
Word Origin & History
An alteration of the word bite so it would not be accidentally misspelled as bit. Coined by Werner Buchholz in 1956, during the early design phase for the IBM 7030 Stretch computer.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"If you look at the photograph of the interior of the Spectrum[…], you will see that there is one ROM chip, and 16 smaller RAM chips. These chips give the Spectrum its memory. The memory consists of 65536 storage units that each contain one byte (a number from 0 to 255)."
— 1984, Neil Ardley, “The ZX Spectrum+ Memory Map”, Learn About Your ZX Spectrum+ (3), in Sinclair ZX Spectrum+ User Guide, Dorling Kindersley, →ISBN, page 48:
"With a varchar, the storage is always the actual number of characters you have stored plus 2 bytes. So a varchar(20) with a 5-character word will take up 7 bytes, with the extra 2 bytes holding a size reference for SQL Server."
— 2008, Eric Johnson, Joshua Jones, A Developer's Guide to Data Modeling for SQL Server:
Explore More C1 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
A single character of text typically takes up one ____ in memory.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
A ____ is a unit of digital information that consists of eight bits.