different between bit vs spark

English

Pronunciation

• enPR: b?t, IPA^(key): /b?t/
• Rhymes: -?t

Etymology 1

From Middle English bitte, bite, from Old English bita (“bit; fragment; morsel”) and bite (“a bite; cut”), from Proto-Germanic *bitô and *bitiz; both from Proto-Indo-European *b?eyd- (“to split”).

Cognate with West Frisian bit, Saterland Frisian Bit, Dutch bit, German Low German Beet, Biet, German Biss and Bissen, Danish bid, Swedish bit, Icelandic biti.

Noun

bit (plural bits)

2. A piece of metal placed in a horse's mouth and connected to the reins to direct the animal.

3. A rotary cutting tool fitted to a drill, used to bore holes.
4. (dated, Britain) A coin of a specified value.

5. (obsolete, Canada) A ten-cent piece, dime.
   • 1941, Emily Carr, Klee Wyck, Chapter 10, [3]

     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. (now US) A unit of currency or coin in the Americas worth a fraction of a Spanish dollar; now specifically, an eighth of a US dollar.
   • 1789, Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative, vol. I, ch. 6:

     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.

8. (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.
9. A small amount of something.
10. (informal) Specifically, a small amount of time.

11. (in the plural, informal, sports) Fractions of a second.

12. A portion of something.

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

      My young companion was a bit of a poet.

14. (slang) A prison sentence, especially a short one.
15. An excerpt of material making up part of a show, comedy routine, etc.

16. Short for bit part.

17. The part of a key which enters the lock and acts upon the bolt and tumblers.

    (Can we find and add a quotation of Knight to this entry?)

18. The cutting iron of a plane.

    (Can we find and add a quotation of Knight to this entry?)

19. The bevelled front edge of an axehead along which the cutting edge runs.

Synonyms

• (coin): coin, piece
• (small piece): morsel (of food), piece, scrap
• (portion): portion, share, segment
• (horse equipment): snaffle, pelham, kimberwicke
• (prison sentence): bid

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

bit (third-person singular simple present bits, present participle bitting, simple past and past participle bitted)

1. (transitive) To put a bridle upon; to put the bit in the mouth of (a horse).

Etymology 2

See bite

Verb

bit

1. simple past tense of bite

   Your dog bit me!

2. (informal in US, archaic in Britain) past participle of bite, bitten

   I have been bit by your dog!

Adjective

bit (not comparable)

1. (colloquial) bitten.

2. (only in combination) Having been bitten.

Etymology 3

Coined by John Tukey in 1946 as an abbreviation of binary digit, probably influenced by connotations of “small portion”. First used in print 1948 by Claude Shannon. Compare byte and nybble.

Noun

bit (plural bits)

2. (mathematics, computing) A binary digit, generally represented as a 1 or 0.
3. (computing) The smallest unit of storage in a digital computer, consisting of a binary digit.

   Synonym: b

5. (information theory, cryptography) Any datum that may take on one of exactly two values.

6. (information theory) 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.

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

Derived terms

Translations

See also

• ban, nat, qubit

References

Anagrams

• Bti, ITB, TBI, TiB, tib

Azerbaijani

Etymology

From Proto-Turkic *bït (“louse”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [bit]

Noun

bit (definite accusative biti, plural bitl?r)

1. louse

Declension

Catalan

Pronunciation

• (Balearic, Central, Valencian) IPA^(key): /?bit/
• Rhymes: -it

Noun

bit m (plural bits)

1. (computing) bit

Czech

Etymology

From English bit, from binary digit.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [?b?t]
• Rhymes: -?t

Noun

bit m

1. (computing) bit

Declension

Derived terms

• bitový
• osmibitový
• šestnáctibitový
• kilobit
• megabit
• gigabit
• terabit

Further reading

• bit in Kartotéka Novo?eského lexikálního archivu
• bit in Slovník spisovného jazyka ?eského, 1960–1971, 1989
• bit in Akademický slovník cizích slov, 1995, at prirucka.ujc.cas.cz

Dutch

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /b?t/
• Hyphenation: bit
• Rhymes: -?t

Etymology 1

Ablaut of bijten.

Noun

bit n (plural bitten, diminutive bitje n)

1. bit (for a working animal)
2. bit (rotary cutting tool)
3. mouthguard

Etymology 2

From English bit.

Noun

bit m (plural bits, diminutive bitje n)

1. bit (binary digit)
2. bit (unit of storage)
3. bit (datum with two possible values)

French

Etymology

From English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bit/

Noun

bit m (plural bits)

1. (computing) bit

Derived terms

• bit le moins significatif
• bit le plus significatif

Further reading

• “bit” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Hungarian

Etymology

From English bit.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [?bit]
• Hyphenation: bit
• Rhymes: -it

Noun

bit (plural bitek)

1. (computing) bit (binary digit)

Declension

Derived terms

• jelz?bit

References

Indonesian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [?b?t]
• Hyphenation: bit

Etymology 1

From English bit (“binary digit”).

Noun

bit (first-person possessive bitku, second-person possessive bitmu, third-person possessive bitnya)

1. (computing) bit, smallest unit of storage.

Etymology 2

From Dutch biet (“binary digit”).

Noun

bit (first-person possessive bitku, second-person possessive bitmu, third-person possessive bitnya)

1. Beta vulgaris, common beet, beetroot, sugar beet, and chard.

Further reading

• “bit” in Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia (KBBI) Daring, Jakarta: Badan Pengembangan dan Pembinaan Bahasa, Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan Republik Indonesia, 2016.

Lashi

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bit/

Noun

bit

1. sun

References

• Hkaw Luk (2017) A grammatical sketch of Lacid?^[6], Chiang Mai: Payap University (master thesis)

Lower Sorbian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /b?it/

Verb

bit

1. supine of bi?

Nigerian Pidgin

Etymology

From English beat.

Verb

bit

1. beat

Norwegian Bokmål

Etymology 1

From Old Norse biti

Noun

bit m (definite singular biten, indefinite plural biter, definite plural bitene)

1. a bit, piece (of something)
2. a bite, mouthful (of food)

Derived terms

• isbit
• smakebit

Etymology 2

From English bit (binary digit)

Noun

bit m (definite singular biten, indefinite plural bit or biter, definite plural bitene)

1. a bit (binary digit)

References

• “bit” in The Bokmål Dictionary.

Norwegian Nynorsk

Etymology 1

From Old Norse

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bi?t/

Noun

bit m (definite singular biten, indefinite plural bitar, definite plural bitane)

1. a bit, piece (of something)

Derived terms

• isbit
• smakebit

Etymology 2

From English bit (binary digit)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /b?t?/

Noun

bit m (definite singular biten, indefinite plural bit or bitar, definit plural bitane)

1. a bit (binary digit)

Etymology 3

From Old Norse bit

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bi?t/

Noun

bit n (definite singular bitet, indefinite plural bit, definite plural bita)

1. a bite (e.g. insect bite, dog bite)
2. a bite, mouthful (of food)

Etymology 4

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bi?t/

Verb

bit

1. inflection of bite:
   1. present
   2. imperative

References

• “bit” in The Nynorsk Dictionary.

Old Irish

Verb

bit

1. third-person plural future of is

Portuguese

Etymology

Borrowed from English bit.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?bit??(i)/, /?bit(i)/

Noun

bit m (plural bits)

1. (mathematics, computing) bit (binary digit)

Synonyms

• Abbreviations: b

Coordinate terms

• Multiples: kilobit, megabit, gigabit, terabit, petabit, exabit, zettabit, yottabit

Related terms

• byte (unit equivalent to 8 bits)

Serbo-Croatian

Etymology 1

From b?ti (“to be”)

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bî?t/

Noun

b?t f (Cyrillic spelling ????)

1. essence
2. point, meaning

Declension

Etymology 2

From English bit

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bît/

Noun

b?t m (Cyrillic spelling ????)

1. (computing) bit

Declension

Slavomolisano

Etymology

From Serbo-Croatian biti, from Proto-Slavic *byti, from Proto-Balto-Slavic *b???tei, from Proto-Indo-European *b?uH-.

Verb

bit pf or impf

1. to be

References

• Walter Breu and Giovanni Piccoli (2000), Dizionario croato molisano di Acquaviva Collecroce: Dizionario plurilingue della lingua slava della minoranza di provenienza dalmata di Acquaviva Collecroce in Provincia di Campobasso (Parte grammaticale)., pp. 409–412

Spanish

Etymology

From English bit.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?bit/, [?bit?]

Noun

bit m (plural bits)

1. bit (binary digit)

Swedish

Etymology

From Old Norse biti, noun definitions 2 and 4: From English bit, from binary digit.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bi?t/ (1–4)
• IPA^(key): /b?t/ (3–4)

Noun

bit c

1. bit (small piece)
2. bit (portion)
3. bit (binary digit)
4. bit (unit of storage)
5. bit (piece of music)

Declension

Related terms

• pusselbit
• sockerbit

Verb

bit

1. imperative of bita.

Turkish

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?bit/

Etymology 1

From Ottoman Turkish ????, ???, from Proto-Turkic *bït (“louse”).

Noun

bit (definite accusative biti, plural bitler)

1. (zoology) louse

Declension

Derived terms

• bit yeni?i (fishy)
• bitli (lousy)

See also

• pire (flea)

Etymology 2

Borrowed from English bit, abbreviation of binary digit.

Noun

bit (definite accusative biti, plural bitler)

1. (computing) bit

Declension

Etymology 3

Verb

bit

1. second-person singular imperative of bitmek

Turkmen

Etymology

From Old Turkic bit? (bit), from Proto-Turkic *b?t (“louse”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /bit?/

Noun

bit (definite accusative bidi, plural bitler)

1. (zoology) louse

Declension

Vietnamese

Pronunciation

• (Hà N?i) IPA^(key): [??it???]
• (Hu?) IPA^(key): [??it???]
• (H? Chí Minh City) IPA^(key): [???t???]

Noun

bit

1. (computing) bit

Zhuang

Pronunciation

• (Standard Zhuang) IPA^(key): /pit?/
• Tone numbers: bit⁷
• Hyphenation: bit

Etymology 1

From Proto-Tai *pit? (“duck”). Cognate with Thai ???? (bpèt), Lao ???? (pet), Lü ??? (?ed), Tai Dam ????, Shan ????? (pét), Ahom ???????????????? (pit), Bouyei bidt, Saek ????. Compare Old Chinese ? (OC *p?id).

Noun

bit (classifier duz, Sawndip form ?, old orthography bit)

1. duck

Derived terms

• roegbit

Etymology 2

From Chinese ? (MC p?i?t?).

Noun

bit (classifier gaiq, Sawndip form ????, old orthography bit)

1. pen; pencil; writing implement

Classifier

bit (old orthography bit)

1. Classifier for sums of money and deals.

Etymology 3

From Chinese ? (MC p?i?t?).

Classifier

bit (old orthography bit)

1. Classifier for cloth: bolt of

English

Pronunciation

• (General American) enPR: spärk, IPA^(key): /sp??k/
• (Received Pronunciation) enPR: späk, IPA^(key): /sp??k/
• Rhymes: -??(?)k
• Homophone: SPARC

Etymology 1

From Middle English sparke, sperke, from Old English spearca, from Proto-Germanic *sprakô (compare Dutch spark and sprank, Middle Low German sparke), from Proto-Indo-European *sperg- (“to strew, sprinkle”) (compare Breton erc’h (“snow”), Latin sparg? (“to scatter, spread”), sparsus (“scattered”), Lithuanian sprógti (“to germinate”), Ancient Greek ??????? (spargá?, “to swell”), Avestan ????????????????????????????????????????? (frasparega, “branch, twig”), Sanskrit ??????? (parjanya, “rain, rain god”)).

Noun

spark (plural sparks)

1. A small particle of glowing matter, either molten or on fire.
2. A short or small burst of electrical discharge.
3. A small, shining body, or transient light; a sparkle.
4. (figuratively) A small amount of something, such as an idea or romantic affection, that has the potential to become something greater, just as a spark can start a fire.
   • , Book IV, Chapter XVII

     But though we have, here and there, a little of this clear light, some sparks of bright knowledge

   • 2013, Phil McNulty, "[1]", BBC Sport, 1 September 2013:

     Everton's Marouane Fellaini looks one certain arrival but Moyes, who also saw United held to a draw by Chelsea at Old Trafford on Monday, needs even more of a spark in a midfield that looked laboured by this team's standards.

5. Any of various lycaenid butterflies of the Indomalayan genus Sinthusa.
6. (in plural sparks but treated as a singular) A ship's radio operator.
7. (Britain, slang) An electrician.

Synonyms

• (small particle of glowing matter): ember, gnast, funk
• (small amount of something, such as an idea, that has the potential to become something greater): beginnings, germ, glimmer

Derived terms

Descendants

• ? Esperanto: sparko

Translations

Verb

spark (third-person singular simple present sparks, present participle sparking, simple past and past participle sparked)

1. (transitive, figuratively) To trigger, kindle into activity (an argument, etc).
2. (transitive) To light; to kindle.
   • 2009, Alex Jenson, The Serotonin Grand Prix (page 12)

     Byron sparked the cigarette. He sucked it dramatically and thrust it into Marko's hand.

3. (intransitive) To give off a spark or sparks.

Derived terms

• spark off
• sparkle

Translations

Etymology 2

Probably Scandinavian, akin to Old Norse sparkr (“sprightly”).

Noun

spark (plural sparks)

1. A gallant; a foppish young man.

   • The finest sparks and cleanest beaux.

   • Jones had no sooner quitted the room, than the petty-fogger, in a whispering tone, asked Mrs Whitefield, “If she knew who that fine spark was?”

2. A beau, lover.

Verb

spark (third-person singular simple present sparks, present participle sparking, simple past and past participle sparked)

1. (intransitive) To woo, court; to act the gallant or beau.

Synonyms

• make love, romance, solicit; see also Thesaurus:woo

Derived terms

• sparkish
• sparker

References

• Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, Massachusetts, G.&C. Merriam Co., 1967

Anagrams

• K-spar, Karps, Parks, Praks, parks

Danish

Etymology

From Old Norse spark, verbal noun to sparka (“to kick”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /spark/, [sb?????]

Noun

spark n (singular definite sparket, plural indefinite spark)

1. kick

Inflection

Verb

spark

1. imperative of sparke

Faroese

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /spa??k/

Noun

spark n (genitive singular sparks, plural spørk)

1. kick

Declension

Derived terms

Icelandic

Etymology

From sparka (“to kick”).

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?spar?k/
• Rhymes: -ar?k

Noun

spark n (genitive singular sparks, nominative plural spörk)

1. kick

Declension

Middle English

Noun

spark

1. Alternative form of sparke

Norwegian Bokmål

Noun

spark n (definite singular sparket, indefinite plural spark, definite plural sparka or sparkene)

1. a kick (with a foot)

Derived terms

• brassespark
• frispark
• hjørnespark
• straffespark

Related terms

• sparke

Verb

spark

1. imperative of sparke

Norwegian Nynorsk

Noun

spark n (definite singular sparket, indefinite plural spark, definite plural sparka)

1. a kick (with a foot)

Derived terms

• brassespark
• frispark
• hjørnespark
• straffespark

Swedish

Etymology

From Old Norse spark, from sparka (“to kick”).

Noun

spark c

1. kick
2. kicksled; short for sparkstötting

Declension

Anagrams

• karps, parks, skarp