Noun

(en noun)

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

A rotary cutting tool fitted to a drill, used to bore holes.

(dated, British) A coin of a specified value. (Also used for a nine-pence coin in the British Caribbean)

(US) An eighth of a dollar. Note that there is no coin minted worth 12.5 cents. (When this term first came into use, the Spanish 8 reales coin was widely used as a dollar equivalent, and thus the 1 real coin was equivalent to 12.5 cents.)

(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.

A small amount of something.

* {{quote-book, year=1963, author=(Margery Allingham), title=(The China Governess)

, chapter=15 citation , passage=‘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?’}}

(informal) Specifically , a small amount of time.

A portion of something.

* {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=July-August, author= Catherine Clabby

, magazine=(American Scientist), title= Focus on Everything , passage=Not long ago, it was difficult to produce photographs of tiny creatures with every part in focus.

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

Am I bored? Not a bit of it!

* T. Hook

My young companion was a bit of a poet.

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

*

*

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(An excerpt of material) An excerpt of material making up part of a show, comedy routine, etc.

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

(Knight)

The cutting iron of a plane.

(Knight)

Noun

(en noun)

(mathematics, computing) A binary digit, generally represented as a 1 or 0.

(computing) The smallest unit of storage in a digital computer, consisting of a binary digit.

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

status bits''' on IRC; permission '''bits in a file system

(information theory) A unit of measure for information entropy.

* {{quote-web, date = 2011-05-17

, author = Lisa Grossman , title = Entropy Is Universal Rule of Language , site = Wired Science , url = http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/universal-entropy/ , accessdate = 2012-09-26}}

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.

Noun

(en noun)

A loose filmy mass or a thin chiplike layer of anything; a film; flock; lamina; layer; scale; as, a flake of snow, paint, or fish.

There were a few flakes of paint on the floor from when we were painting the walls.

flakes of dandruff

(archaeology) A prehistoric tool chipped out of stone.

(informal) A person who is impractical, flighty, unreliable, or inconsistent; especially with maintaining a living.

She makes pleasant conversation, but she's kind of a flake when it comes time for action.

A carnation with only two colours in the flower, the petals having large stripes.

Noun

(-)

(UK) Dogfish.

(Australia) The meat of the gummy shark.

* 1999 , R. Shotton, , Case studies of the management of elasmobranch fisheries , Part 1, page 746,

Larger shark received about 10%/kg less than those in the 4-6 kg range. Most of the Victorian landed product is wholesaled as carcasses on the Melbourne Fish Market where it is sold to fish and chip shops, the retail sector and through restaurants as ‘flake ’.

* 2007 , Archie Gerzee, WOW! Tales of a Larrikin Adventurer , page 141,

The local fish shop sold a bit of flake (shark) but most people were too spoiled to eat shark. The main item on the Kiwi table was still snapper, and there was plenty of them, caught by the Kiwis themselves, so no shortage whatsoever.

* 2007 , Lyall Robert Ford, 101 ways to Improve Your Health , page 45,

Until recently, deep-sea fish were considered to have insignificant levels of mercury but even these now contain higher levels than they used to, so you should also avoid the big fish like tuna, swordfish, and flake (shark) that are highest up the food chain.

Noun

(en noun)

(UK, dialect) A paling; a hurdle.

A platform of hurdles, or small sticks made fast or interwoven, supported by stanchions, for drying codfish and other things.

* English Husbandman

You shall also, after they be ripe, neither suffer them to have straw nor fern under them, but lay them either upon some smooth table, boards, or flakes of wands, and they will last the longer.

(nautical) A small stage hung over a vessel's side, for workmen to stand on while calking, etc.