Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

byte

/baɪt/

Word Rarity Rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.15 in modern English

Syllables: byte
IPA: /baɪt/

9

Scrabble Score

4

Letters

1

Syllables

4

Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

A short sequence of bits (binary digits) that can be operated on as a unit by a computer; the smallest usable machine word.

noun

A unit of computing storage equal to eight bits, which can represent any of 256 distinct values.

Example Sentences

"The word “hello” fits into five bytes of ASCII code."
"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)."
"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."

Etymology

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.

Inflected Forms

bytes (plural)

Derived Forms

brontobyte bytecode byter bytesexual bytestring bytewise exabyte exbibyte geopbyte gibibyte gigabyte hellabyte

Phrases

byte bucket byte order byte code byte order mark byte-order mark byte pair encoding least significant byte most significant byte

Frequently Paired Words

word doubleword longword char nibble nybble bit kilobyte

Synonyms

B octet

Homonyms

bight bite by't

Rhymes With

right might night white light quite fight site non-white write tonight despite

Questions

How do you pronounce byte?: The recorded pronunciation is /baɪt/.
What does byte mean?: A short sequence of bits (binary digits) that can be operated on as a unit by a computer; the smallest usable machine word.
Where does byte come from?: 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.

How to pronounce byte

Open the pronunciation page — Open the Speakur entry for “byte”.
Read the phonetic spelling — Read the IPA spelling (/baɪt/) so you know which sounds to aim for.
Play the audio — Click Play to hear reference audio for “byte”.
Repeat and practice — Say “byte” aloud, matching stress and vowels until it feels natural.