Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

big-endian

Word Rarity Very rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.92 in modern English

Syllables: big-en-di-an
IPA

13

Scrabble Score

9

Letters

4

Syllables

7

Unique Chars

Meaning

adj

Storing the most significant byte of a multibyte number at a lower address than the least significant byte; that is, "big end" first.

adj

Transmitting the most significant byte of a multibyte number before transmitting the least significant byte; that is, "big end" first.

Example Sentences

"Most big Unix machines are big-endian, but Intel x86 machines and older Digital machines are little-endian."
"The network octet order for all protocols in the TCP/IP protocol suite is big-endian. A big-endian computer system need not perform any conversion in building TCP/IP protocol headers from integers stored in its memory."

Etymology

See the etymology for endian.

Frequently Paired Words

endianness endianless

Synonyms

network byte-order

Antonyms

little-endian

Questions

What does big-endian mean?: Storing the most significant byte of a multibyte number at a lower address than the least significant byte; that is, "big end" first.
Where does big-endian come from?: See the etymology for endian.

How to pronounce big-endian

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