bit bucket
Syllables: bit buck·etUK/ˈbɪt ˌbʌ.kɪt/US/ˈbɪt ˌbʌ.kət/
bit bucket 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
bit bucket (plural bit buckets)
- 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.
- 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.1964, Donald I. Cutler, chapter 6, in Introduction to Computer Programming, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, →OCLC, footnote 1, page 108
- Synonyms:
- chad box
- 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.
- Applications [...] Overflow register (bit bucket)[1972], Fully Encoded, 9046 × N, Random Access Write-Only-Memory: Final Specification (Signetics; 25120), [Sunnyvale, Calif.]: Signetics, archived from the original on 16 Mar 2012, page 1, column 1
- 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.1983 May 23, Steve Rosenthal, “Glossary: Rosenthal’s ABCs”, in Maggie Canon, editor, InfoWorld: The Newsweekly for Microcomputer Users, volume 5, number 21, Framingham, Mass.: Popular Computing...
- Synonyms:
- black hole, byte bucket, great bit bucket in the sky, memory hole
Verb
bit bucket (third-person singular simple present bit buckets, present participle bit bucketing, simple past and past participle bit bucketed)
- To delete.
- This DSC receives all inputs and performs all computations in synchronization with the online computer; however, the DSC outputs are "bit bucketed."1970, 1970 WESCON Technical Papers: Western Electronic Show and Convention: Papers Presented at the Western Electronic Show and Convention in Los Angeles, California, August 25–28, 1970, Los Angeles...
- When the program is pressed into heavier duty it simply can't hold the entire list in memory, so someone else has to "open up the code" and perform major, instead of minor, surgery. This only increases the chances that the program will be bitbucketed rather than updated.1996, Lou Grinzo, Software Development, volume 4, San Francisco, Calif.: Miller Freeman, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 30, column 1
Examples of bit bucket in a sentence
- Science data would then go into the "bit bucket." Since current spacecraft are complex and expensive, the latter solution is rarely used (intentionally!) today.1995, Joan C. Horvath, “Spacecraft Autonomy Issues: Present and Future”, in Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, volume 49...
- If the CRC does not match the one carried in the frame, then the packet is destroyed (sent to the "Bit Bucket" in Figure 16.1).2000, Scott Mann, Ellen L. Mitchell, “Packet Filtering with ipchains”, in Linux System Security: An Administrator’s Guide to Open Source...
- In [John] Watkinson's view, all recording should be done in non-specific "bit buckets," with a computer figuring out what got recorded where and when.2002, Mark Schubin, “A Digital Primer, Schubin-style”, in John Rice, Brian McKernan, editors, Creating Digital Content: Video Production...
- Conversely, a left-shift pads the rightmost bit with a zero and the upper, leftmost bit falls off into the "bit bucket".2010, Frank O’Brien, “The AGC Hardware”, in John Mason, editor, The Apollo Guidance Computer: Architecture and Operation (Springer–Praxis...
Synonyms of bit bucket
Forms of bit bucket
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | bit buckets |
| alternative form | bitbucket |
| alternative form | bit-bucket |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | bit buckets |
| present participle | bit bucketing |
| past participle | bit bucketed |
| past | bit bucketed |
Origin of bit bucket
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.
Questions about bit bucket
- What does bit bucket mean?
- Bit bucket means 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.
- How do you use bit bucket in a sentence?
- Science data would then go into the "bit bucket." Since current spacecraft are complex and expensive, the latter solution is rarely used (intentionally!) today.
- What part of speech is bit bucket?
- Bit bucket can be a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce bit bucket?
- Bit bucket is pronounced /ˈbɪt ˌbʌ.kɪt/ (UK).
- What is the plural of bit bucket?
- The plural of bit bucket is bit buckets.
Words near bit bucket in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bit bucket (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-bit bucket.ogg.
Cite this entry: “bit bucket.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bit_bucket. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.