bit

noun

1. 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. A rotary cutting tool, fitted to a drill, brace, or router, used to bore or drill holes or to remove material from the profile of the workpiece.

   “router bit”

   “chamfering bit”

3. (British, dated)Applied to a various small units of currency and coins.

   “a threepenny bit”

4. (Canada, US, historical)Applied to a various small units of currency and coins.

   “A quarter is two bits.”

   “He left after shaking her down for four bits for carrying the bags.”

5. (Canada, US, obsolete)Applied to a various small units of currency and coins.

   “The smallest coin we had in Canada in early days was a dime, worth ten cents. The Indians called this coin “a Bit”. Our next coin, double in buying power and in size, was a twenty-five cent piece and this the Indians called “Two Bits”.”

6. (historical)Applied to a various small units of currency and coins.

   “I trusted to the Lord to be with me; and at one of our trips to St. Eustatia, a Dutch island, I bought a glass tumbler with my half bit, and when I came to Montserrat I sold it for a bit, or sixpence.”

7. (historical)Applied to a various small units of currency and coins.
8. Applied to a various small units of currency and coins.
9. 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.”

   “‘No,’ said Luke, grinning at her. ‘You're not dull enough! […] What about the kid's clothes? I don't suppose they were anything to write home about, but didn't you keep anything? A bootee or a bit of embroidery or anything at all?’”

   “"I suppose my first objective was to try and help a department, which was very much civil servants who are rotating around on a regular basis, to try and understand public transport a wee bit better and try and understand what was required to run a bus and rail network," muses Conway.”

10. (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.”

11. (informal)A small fraction above a whole number.

    “The movie lasted for two and a bit hours.”

12. (in-plural, informal)Fractions of a second.

    “The 400 metres race was won in 47 seconds and bits.”

13. A portion of something.

    “I'd like a big bit of cake, please.”

    “Not long ago, it was difficult to produce photographs of tiny creatures with every part in focus.[…]A photo processing technique called focus stacking has changed that. Developed as a tool to electronically combine the sharpest bits of multiple digital images, focus stacking is a boon to biologists seeking full focus on a micron scale.”

14. Somewhat; something, but not very great; also used like jot and whit to express the smallest degree. See also a bit.

    “Am I bored? Not a bit of it!”

    “My young companion was a bit of a poet.”

15. A replaceable tip for a hand tool or power tool, comprising the portion that drives a fastener.

    “Near-synonym: driver”

    “driver bit”

16. (slang)A prison sentence, especially a short one.

    “Had it not been for the influence of Mrs. Booth and Hope Hall I should still be grafting or doing a bit in some stir”

    “Before doing that I am going to tell you what was the result of my own incarceration, because I presume it may not be a secret to you, that I have done a "bit" myself, not the "bit" which the prosecuting attorney was so anxious to have me do.”

    “Chino didn't make me think of Dachau or that notorious joint in Angola, Louisiana, where a brother who had done a bit there told me how they used to cut the grass on the front lawn with their fingernails.”

    “Not counting the days—that's okay for a county-time slap, but it'll make you crazy if you've got years to go on a felony bit.”

17. 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.”

18. (slang)A gag or put-on; a humorous conceit, especially when insistently presented as true.

    “Are you serious, or is this a bit?”

    “Also, I'm bi. I like dudes! ...That's weird to say. Everything I say feels like a bit now, god dammit.”

19. (abbreviation, alt-of, ellipsis)Ellipsis of bit part.

    “She acted her bit in the opening scene.”

20. The part of a key which enters the lock and acts upon the bolt and tumblers.
21. The cutting iron of a plane.
22. The bevelled front edge of an axehead along which the cutting edge runs.
23. A gag of a style similar to a bridle.
24. (Multicultural-London-English)A gun.

    “Jimmy: I need to get my hands on some bits. If you’re still in the business. Ronnie (played by Nick Nevern): Oi! Trojan (played by Jean-Paul Van Cauwelaert): Ronnie. […] Trojan: Now that is a SIG Sauer P226.”

25. A binary digit, generally represented as a 1 or 0.
26. The smallest unit of storage in a digital computer, consisting of a binary digit.
27. Any datum that may take on one of exactly two values.

    “status bits on IRC”

    “permission bits in a file system”

28. A unit of measure for information entropy.

    “The researchers found that the original texts spanned a variety of entropy values in different languages, reflecting differences in grammar and structure. But strangely, the difference in entropy between the original, ordered text and the randomly scrambled text was constant across languages. This difference is a way to measure the amount of information encoded in word order, Montemurro says. The amount of information lost when they scrambled the text was about 3.5 bits per word.”

29. A microbitcoin, or a millionth of a bitcoin (0.000001 BTC).

verb

1. (transitive)To put a bridle upon; to put the bit in the mouth of (a horse).
2. (form-of, past)simple past of bite

   “Your dog bit me!”

3. (archaic, form-of, informal, participle, past)past participle of bite, bitten

   “I've been bit by your dog!”

adj

1. (in-compounds, not-comparable)Having been bitten.

   “Even though he's bit, of course the zombies would still chase him.”

   “Fortunately, someone who gets skeeter-bit this much may develop an immunity to the skeeter's saliva”

   “Only the year before, the conjure man had brought in the Jackson County madstone, from way over in Illinois, for a white peddler that had been dog-bit, and the man went ahead and died just the same”

   “He will not — he'll tell you not to be loco, climbing up trees late at night when you'll get bug-bit to death plus you can't see anything”

name

1. An Austroasiatic language spoken in China and Laos.
2. (UK, abbreviation, acronym, alt-of)Acronym of Behavioural Insights Team.