

The word "bit" is a portmanteau word for Binary digIT - damian2000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_term_etymologies

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DanBC
Vaguely disturbing that this is new to anyone on HN. Queue discussion of
nibbles and bytes.

The paper is well worth reading if you haven't already done so.

    
    
        A Mathematical Theory of Communication
    

([http://cm.bell-
labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pd...](http://cm.bell-
labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pdf))

Especially page 5, which is a very easy to understand description of EDIT
markov chains. But you can use that letter frequency thing to do a really nice
easy description of compression.

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quorn3000
It's a contraction. Yes, I've read the wikipedia definition of portmanteau,
and I still think _bit_ isn't a portmanteau.

Obligatory <http://xkcd.com/739/>

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sohn
So

