Word.ws English Dictionary

bit rot

bit rot noun: the putative tendency of content in storage to become corrupt over time.

Noun

bit rot (uncountable)

  1. The putative tendency of content in storage to become corrupt over time.
    • The rise of gaming has its own place in the story of digital culture, but Cerf warns that important political and historical documents will also be lost to bit rot.2015 February 13, Ian Sample, “Google boss warns of 'forgotten century' with email and photos at risk”, in The Guardian
  2. The tendency of software in storage to develop bugs over time due to minor incompatibilities with newer operating environments.

Synonyms of bit rot

Forms of bit rot

alternative formbitrot

Questions about bit rot

What does bit rot mean?
Bit rot means the putative tendency of content in storage to become corrupt over time.
What part of speech is bit rot?
Bit rot is a noun.

Words near bit rot in the dictionary

  1. bit players
  2. bit rate
  3. bit rates
  4. bit role
  5. bit roles
  6. bit rot
  7. bit shank
  8. bit shanks
  9. bit shift
  10. bit shifted
  11. bit shifting

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bit rot (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.

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Cite this entry: “bit rot.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bit_rot. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.