| bit | |
| 1. n. A piece of metal placed in a horse's mouth and connected to the reins to direct the animal. | |
| A horse hates having a bit put in its mouth. | |
| 2. n. A rotary cutting tool fitted to a drill, used to bore holes. | |
| 3. n. (dated, British) A coin of a specified value. (Also formerly used for a nine-pence coin in the British Caribbean, and a fourpenny piece, or groat, in the British West Indies.) | |
| a threepenny bit | |
| 4. n. (obsolete, Canada) A ten-cent piece, dime. | |
| 5. n. (US) An eighth of a dollar. Note that there is no coin minted worth 12.5 cents. (When this term first came into use, the Spanish 8 reales coin was widely used as a dollar equivalent, and thus the 1 re | |
| A quarter is two bits. | |
| 6. n. (historical, US) In the southern and southwestern states, a small silver coin (such as the real) formerly current; commonly, one worth about 12½ cents; also, the sum of 12½ cents. | |
| 7. n. A small amount of something. | |
| There were bits of paper all over the floor. Does your leg still hurt? / Just a bit now. I've done my bit; I expect you to do yours. | |
| 8. n. (informal) Specifically, a small amount of time. | |
| I'll be there in a bit; I need to take care of something first. He was here just a bit ago, but it looks like he's stepped out. | |
| 9. n. A portion of something. | |
| I'd like a big bit of cake, please. | |
| 10. n. Somewhat; something, but not very great; also used like jot and whit to express the smallest degree. | |
| Am I bored? Not a bit of it! | |
| 11. n. (slang) A prison sentence, especially a short one. | |
| 12. n. (anchor, An excerpt of material) An excerpt of material making up part of a show, comedy routine, etc. | |
| His bit about video games was not nearly as entertaining as the other segments of his show. | |
| 13. n. The part of a key which enters the lock and acts upon the bolt and tumblers. | |
| 14. n. The cutting iron of a plane. | |
| 15. adv. To a small extent; in a small amount (usually with "a"). | |
| That's a bit too sweet. | |
| 16. v. To put a bridle upon; to put the bit in the mouth of (a horse). | |
| 17. v. simple past tense of bite | |
| Your dog bit me! | |
| 18. v. (informal in US, archaic in Britain) past of bite, bitten | |
| I have been bit by your dog! | |
| 19. adj. (colloquial) bitten. | |
| Even though he's bit, of course the zombies would still chase him. | |
| 20. adj. (only in combination) Having been bitten. | |
| 21. n. (mathematics, computing) A binary digit, generally represented as a 1 or 0. | |
| 22. n. (computing) The smallest unit of storage in a digital computer, consisting of a binary digit. | |
| 23. n. (information theory, cryptography) Any datum that may take on one of exactly two values. | |
| status bits on IRC; permission bits in a file system | |
| 24. n. (information theory) A unit of measure for information entropy. | |
| 25. n. A microbitcoin, or a millionth of a bitcoin (0.000001 BTC). | |
