Noun

Any one of four equal parts into which something has been divided.

(US, Canada) A coin worth 25 cents (1/4 of a dollar).

A period of three consecutive months (1/4 of a year).

A section or area (of a town, etc.).

(uncountable) Accommodation granted to a defeated opponent

* 1955 , J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King , HarperCollinsPublishers (2007), p. 1110.

Hard fighting and long labour they had still; for the Southrons were bold men and grim, and fierce in despair, and the Easterlings were strong and war-hardened and asked for no quarter .

An old English measure of corn, containing 8 bushels.

* 1882 , James Edwin Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England , volume 4, p. 204.

One of these is 1 Hen. V, cap. 10, defining the quarter of corn to be eight struck bushels, and putting fines on purveyors who take more.

An old English measure of cloth, nine inches or four nails

(historical) Each of the four divisions or watches of a twelve-hour night.

* 1526 , William Tyndale, trans. Bible , Mark VI:

And aboute the fourth quartre of the nyght, he cam unto them, walkinge apon the see [...].

(heraldiccharge) A charge made up of a quarter of the shield, larger than a canton, and normally on the upper dexter side, formed by a perpendicular line from the top meeting a horizontal line from the side.

That part on either side of a horse's hoof between the toe and heel, being the side of the coffin.

* 1877 , (Anna Sewell), (Black Beauty) Chapter 23[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Black_Beauty/23]

...at last she kicked right over the carriage pole and fell down, after giving me a severe blow on my near quarter .

(nautical) The aftmost part of a vessel's side, roughly from the last mast to the stern.

(obsolete) Friendship; amity; concord.

* Shakespeare

In quarter , and in terms like bride and groom.

* Francis Bacon

I knew two that were competitors for the secretary's place, and yet kept good quarter between themselves.

A quartermaster sergeant; a quartermaster.

* 1925 , (Ford Madox Ford), No More Parades'', Penguin 2012 (''Parade's End ), p. 360:

Tietjens said: ‘Send the Canadian sergeant-major to me at the double….’ to the quarter .

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.