How do you pronounce bit bucket?

The recorded pronunciation is /ˈbɪt ˌbʌ.kət/.

bit bucket

/ˈbɪt ˌbʌ.kət/

Word Rarity Uncommon

Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.05 in modern English

Syllables: bit buck-et
IPA: /ˈbɪt ˌbʌ.kət/

Scrabble Score

Letters

Syllables

Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

A container for holding chad (“small punched-out pieces of paper”) from paper tape or punch cards used with teleprinters, early computers, and other machines.

noun

An imaginary domain that accepts lost, discarded, or useless digital data that does not reach its intended destination, such as data lost in transmission or due to errors; the notional resting place of lost or missing digital information.

Humorous; Slang

verb

To delete.

Humorous; Slang; Transitive verb

Example Sentences

"The lost bits fall into a container called a bit bucket. They are emptied periodically and the collected bits are used for confetti at weddings, parties, and other festive occasions."
"Applications [...] Overflow register (bit bucket)"
"bit bucket – the term for a routine or circuit that accepts binary signals and produces no output. Bit buckets are used for testing and to stand in for routines or circuits that have not been implemented at that particular point."
"Inside the computer, every time a byte moves from one component to another the hardware performs a parity check by counting the number of ones. [...] But let's say a power surge or some other line noise is picked up by the computer and the byte is scrambled. [...] The errant byte, having failed the parity test, is unceremoniously dumped into the bit bucket, the computer's wastepaper basket."
"Fortunately, "RTM" [Robert Tappan Morris] was not out to deliberately cause damage. What would have happened if he had been? Millions of dollars in time and research data gone into the bit-bucket?"
"An alternative is for the automated spacecraft to assume that tracking is always available and to have the spacecraft take its data and return it accepting that some fraction of the time communication will in fact not be available. Science data would then go into the "bit bucket." Since current spacecraft are complex and expensive, the latter solution is rarely used (intentionally!) today."

Etymology

The noun is derived from bit (“small amount of something; smallest unit of storage in a digital computer, consisting of a binary digit”) + bucket. Bit in this context originally referred to small pieces of paper punched out from paper tape or punch cards (see sense 1), but came to be regarded as the unit of data storage (sense 2). The verb is derived from the noun.

Regional Pronunciation

American English: /ˈbɪt ˌbʌ.kət/
British English: /ˈbɪt ˌbʌ.kɪt/

Usage

Subject

Wiktionary places this term in Computing.

Inflected Forms

bit buckets (plural) bitbucket (alternative) bit-bucket (alternative) bit buckets (present, singular) bit bucketing (participle, present) bit bucketed (participle, past) bit bucketed (past)

Phrases

write-only memory

Frequently Paired Words

/dev/null write-only memory

Synonyms

chad box black hole byte bucket great bit bucket in the sky memory hole