byte

/baɪt/

byte 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

byte (plural bytes)

A short sequence of bits (binary digits) that can be operated on as a unit by a computer; the smallest usable machine word.
(most commonly) A unit of computing storage equal to eight bits, which can represent any of 256 distinct values.
- 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).1984, Neil Ardley, “The ZX Spectrum+ Memory Map”, Learn About Your ZX Spectrum+ (3), in Sinclair ZX Spectrum+ User Guide, Dorling Kindersley, →ISBN, page 48
Synonyms:

B, octet

byte meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and Urdu

byte in Hindi

8-bit unit: बाइट bāiṭ

byte in Tamil

எண்ணுன்மி, பைட்டு, இருமித்தொகுதி

byte in Marathi

बाईट, बायट

byte in Urdu

8-bit unit: لکمہ

More languagesFewer languages

byte in Bengali: বাইট baiṭ
byte in Telugu: బైట్, బైటు, బైటే
byte in Malayalam: ബൈറ്റ്
byte in Kannada: ಎಂಕೆ, ಎಂಟು ದ್ವಿಮಾನಕಗಳ ಸರಣಿ, ಅಷ್ಟಕ
byte in Punjabi: ਬਾਈਟ
byte in Gujarati: બાઇટ, બાયટ
byte in Odia: ବାଇଟ୍
byte in Sinhala: බයිට bayiṭa
byte in Nepali: बाईट, बाइट, बाइटे
byte in Arabic: بَايْت bāyt
byte in Malay: bait
byte in Indonesian: bita
byte in Persian: بایت bâyt
byte in Thai: ไบต์ bái
byte in Vietnamese: byte, bai, bai-tơ
byte in Myanmar: ဘိုက် bhuik

Examples of byte in a sentence

An array of bytes uses its index as the offset, of words a multiple thereof.
It actually only requires a few bytes to be zeroised to init the drive.
In UTF-8, the number of bytes used to write a character to a file depends on the Unicode code point.

All 34 example sentences with byte

Synonyms of byte

B
octet

Forms of byte

plural	bytes

Plural of byte: bytes

Origin of byte

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.

Words formed from byte

Phrases with byte

Words that rhyme with byte

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about byte

What does byte mean?: Byte means a short sequence of bits (binary digits) that can be operated on as a unit by a computer; the smallest usable machine word.
What is byte in Hindi?: Byte in Hindi is बाइट (bāiṭ). See Byte meaning in Hindi.
What part of speech is byte?: Byte is a noun.
How do you pronounce byte?: Byte is pronounced /baɪt/.
What is the plural of byte?: The plural of byte is bytes.

Words near byte in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: byte (page history and authors); byte (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); byte (Marathi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); byte (Telugu, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); byte (Malayalam Wiktionary) (page history and authors); byte (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors); byte (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); byte (Gujarati, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); byte (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); byte (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-byte.ogg.

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