Etymology

gigabyte

G2I1G2A1B3Y4T1E1

Today it means: One billion (10⁹, or 1,000,000,000) bytes or 1,000 megabytes. Full definition →

English byte ← Middle English biten ← Old English bītan
Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

  1. Ancient GreekΓίγας (Gígas)
  2. Ancient Greekγίγας (gígas)
  3. Englishgiga-
  4. Proto-Indo-European*bʰeyd-
  5. Proto-Indo-European*bʰéydt
  6. Proto-Germanic*bītaną
  7. Proto-West Germanic*bītan
  8. Old Englishbītan
  9. Middle Englishbiten
  10. Englishbite
  11. Englishbyte
  12. English todaygigabyte

From giga- + byte.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.