Bit vs Stuff - What's the difference?
bit | stuff |
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 (informal) Specifically , a small amount of time.
A portion of something.
* {{quote-magazine, year=2013, month=July-August, author=
, magazine=(American Scientist), title= Somewhat; something, but not very great; also used like jot and whit to express the smallest degree.
* T. Hook
(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.
The cutting iron of a plane.
To a small extent; in a small amount (usually with "a").
To put a bridle upon; to put the bit in the mouth of (a horse).
(bite)
, bitten
(label) bitten.
(label) Having been bitten.
*
*
*
1946] First used in print 1948 by (Claude Shannon). Compare (byte) and (nybble).
(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.
(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}}
Miscellaneous items; things; (with possessive) personal effects.
:
*
*:The Bat—they called him the Bat.. He'd never been in stir, the bulls had never mugged him, he didn't run with a mob, he played a lone hand, and fenced his stuff so that even the fence couldn't swear he knew his face.
The tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object.
*Sir (c.1569-1626)
*:The workman on his stuff' his skill doth show, / And yet the ' stuff gives not the man his skill.
A material for making clothing; any woven textile, but especially a woollen fabric.
*1992 , Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety , Harper Perennial 2007, p.147:
*:She was going out to buy some lengths of good woollen stuff for Louise's winter dresses.
Abstract substance or character.
*c.1599 , (William Shakespeare),
*:When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept; / Ambition should be made of sterner stuff
*c.1610 , (William Shakespeare), (The Tempest) ,
*:We are such stuff / As dreams are made on
(lb)
:
*{{quote-book, year=1935, author=
, title=Death on the Centre Court, chapter=3
, passage=It had been his intention to go to Wimbledon, but as he himself said: “Why be blooming well frizzled when you can hear all the results over the wireless.
*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)
, title= Substitution for trivial details.
:
(lb) Narcotic drugs, especially heroin.
*1947 , William Burroughs, letter, 11 March:
*:For some idiotic reason the bureaucrats are more opposed to tea than to stuff .
Furniture; goods; domestic vessels or utensils.
*Sir (c.1564-1627)
*:He took away locks, and gave away the king's stuff .
(lb) A medicine or mixture; a potion.
:(Shakespeare)
(lb) Refuse or worthless matter; hence, also, foolish or irrational language; nonsense; trash.
*(John Dryden) (1631-1700)
*:Anger would indite / Such woeful stuff as I or Shadwell write.
(lb) A melted mass of turpentine, tallow, etc., with which the masts, sides, and bottom of a ship are smeared for lubrication.
:
Paper stock ground ready for use. When partly ground, it is called half stuff .
:(Knight)
To fill by crowding something into; to cram with something; to load to excess.
* Dryden
* 1922 , (Margery Williams), (The Velveteen Rabbit)
To fill a space with (something) in a compressed manner.
* Francis Bacon
(used in the passive) To sate.
(transitive, British, Australia, New Zealand) To be broken. (rfex)
To sexually penetrate. (rfex)
To be cut off in a race by having one's projected and committed racing line (trajectory) disturbed by an abrupt manoeuvre by a competitor.
To preserve a dead bird or animal by filling its skin.
To obstruct, as any of the organs; to affect with some obstruction in the organs of sense or respiration.
* Shakespeare
To form or fashion by packing with the necessary material.
* Jonathan Swift
(dated) To crowd with facts; to cram the mind of; sometimes, to crowd or fill with false or idle tales or fancies.
As a verb bit
is to beat (to strike or pound repeatedly).As a noun stuff is
living room.bit
English
(wikipedia bit)Etymology 1
From (etyl) bita and bite - all from (etyl) .Noun
(en noun)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?’}}
Catherine Clabby
Focus on Everything, passage=Not long ago, it was difficult to produce photographs of tiny creatures with every part in focus.
- Am I bored? Not a bit of it!
- My young companion was a bit of a poet.
- (Knight)
- (Knight)
Synonyms
* (coin) coin, piece * (small piece) morsel (of food), piece, scrap * (portion) portion, share, segment * (horse equipment) snaffle, pelham, kimberwickeDerived terms
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *Adverb
(-)- That's a bit too sweet.
Verb
(bitt)Etymology 2
See biteVerb
(head)- Your dog bit me!
- I have been bit by your dog!
Adjective
(-)Etymology 3
Coined by (John Tukey) in 1946 as an abbreviation of (binary digit), probably influenced by connotations of “small portion”.[http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news/98/q2/0602-honorary.html][http://www.thocp.net/timeline/1944.htmNoun
(en noun)- status bits''' on IRC; permission '''bits in a file system
- 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.
Synonyms
* (smallest unit of storage) bDerived terms
* bit-depth * bitwise * hidden bit * high-order bit * least significant bit * most significant bit * * * * *See also
* ban, nat, qubitStatistics
*stuff
English
(wikipedia stuff)Noun
(en-noun)George Goodchild
Yesterday’s fuel, passage=The dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, extracting it in earnest began only in 1859 after an oil strike in Pennsylvania. The first barrels of crude fetched $18 (around $450 at today’s prices).}}
Usage notes
* The textile sense is increasingly specialized and sounds dated in everyday contexts.Verb
(en verb)- She stuffed the turkey for Thanksgiving using her secret stuffing recipe.
- Lest the gods, for sin, / Should with a swelling dropsy stuff thy skin.
- The Rabbit could not claim to be a model of anything, for he didn’t know that real rabbits existed; he thought they were all stuffed with sawdust like himself, and he understood that sawdust was quite out-of-date and should never be mentioned in modern circles.
- He stuffed his clothes into the closet and shut the door.
- Put roses into a glass with a narrow mouth, stuffing them close together and they retain smell and colour.
- I’m stuffed after having eaten all that turkey, mashed potatoes and delicious stuffing.
- I got stuffed by that guy on the supermoto going into that turn, almost causing us to crash.
- I'm stuffed , cousin; I cannot smell.
- An Eastern king put a judge to death for an iniquitous sentence, and ordered his hide to be stuffed into a cushion, and placed upon the tribunal.