byte pair encoding

noun

A lossless data compression algorithm that iteratively replaces the most frequent pair of adjacent bytes in a sequence with a new byte not already present in the data.

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Meanings

nounbyte pair encoding (countable and uncountable, plural byte pair encodings)

plural byte pair encodings · alternative byte-pair encoding

  1. countableuncountablecomputingA lossless data compression algorithm that iteratively replaces the most frequent pair of adjacent bytes in a sequence with a new byte not already present in the data.
  2. countableuncountablenatural language processingA subword tokenization method that iteratively merges the most frequent pairs of adjacent characters in a corpus to form longer and more meaningful tokens, typically until a predefined vocabulary size is reached.
Cite this entry
APA

byte pair encoding. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 2, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/byte%20pair%20encoding

MLA

“byte pair encoding.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/byte%20pair%20encoding. Accessed November 2, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “byte pair encoding,” accessed November 2, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/byte%20pair%20encoding.

Source: byte pair encoding on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.