gigabit
gigabit Lexical Profile
gigabit Game Scores & Validity
• noun
A unit of digital information or data transfer capacity equal to one billion (10^9) bits, or in some binary contexts 2^30 (1,073,741,824) bits.
"The fiber-optic network can transmit data at speeds of up to ten gigabits per second."
Word Nuance & Usage
Do not confuse 'gigabit' (commonly abbreviated as 'Gb' with a lowercase 'b') with 'gigabyte' ('GB' with an uppercase 'B'); because one byte equals eight bits, a gigabyte is eight times larger than a gigabit. Telecommunications and internet transfer speeds are typically measured in gigabits per second, whereas file sizes and storage capacity are measured in gigabytes.
Word Origin & Etymology
Coined in the mid-20th century by combining the metric prefix 'giga-' (from Ancient Greek 'gigas', meaning 'giant', used to denote a factor of one billion) with 'bit' (a blend of 'binary digit').