petabyte

P3E1T1A1B3Y4T1E1
/ˈpɛtəbaɪt/

noun

One quadrillion (10¹⁵, or 1,000,000,000,000,000) bytes or 1,000 terabytes.

UncommonScrabble 15

Meanings

nounpetabyte (plural petabytes)

plural petabytes

  1. One quadrillion (10¹⁵, or 1,000,000,000,000,000) bytes or 1,000 terabytes.
  2. informalcomputingA pebibyte.

    Instead, Fifield figured out how to “overlap” files inside of a Zip archive, allowing for compression rates far beyond those of a traditional archive—in his most impressive case, he managed to get a 46-megabyte file to compress 4.5 petabytes of data.

    2019 July 10, Ernie Smith, “The Most Clever ‘Zip Bomb’ Ever Made Explodes a 46MB File to 4.5 Petabytes”, in VICE, archived from the original on 11 Sep 2024
    2 more examples

    As we moved along that progression, we went from the folder analogy to the file cabinet analogy to the library analogy to — well, at petabytes we ran out of organizational analogies. At the petabyte scale, information is not a matter of simple three- and four-dimensional taxonomy and order but of dimensionally agnostic statistics.

    2008 June 23, Chris Anderson, “The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete”, in WIRED, →ISSN, archived from the original on 08 Feb 2016

    The Hadron Collider has gone from producing 320 terabytes of data a week to a petabyte a second. In short, it has been said that the total amount of data created worldwide in 2011 was about one zetabyte^([sic]) (or 1,000,000 petabytes) and that this figure will increase by 50%–60% in each subsequent year.

    2017, Jeffrey R. Di Leo, Higher Education under Late Capitalism, Springer, →ISBN, page 82

Synonyms & antonyms

Similar

nouna unit of information equal to 1000 terabytes or 10^15 bytes

Similar
Broader
computer memory unit

nouna unit of information equal to 1024 tebibytes or 2^50 bytes

Broader
computer memory unit

Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.

Origin

  1. Englishpeta-
  2. Proto-Indo-European*bʰeyd-
  3. Proto-Indo-European*bʰéydt
  4. Proto-Germanic*bītaną
  5. Proto-West Germanic*bītan
  6. Old Englishbītan
  7. Middle Englishbiten
  8. Englishbite
  9. Englishbyte
  10. Englishpetabyte

From peta- + byte.

Full word history & related roots →

Translations

Arabic بِيتَابَايْت
  • بِيتَابَايْت (bitabayt)1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
Chinese Mandarin 拍它字節 /拍它字节, 拍字節 /拍字节
  • 拍它字節 /拍它字节 (pāitāzìjié)1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
  • 拍字節 /拍字节 (pāizìjié)1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
  • PB1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
Czech petabyte, petabajt
  • petabyte1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
  • petabajt1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
Esperanto petabajto, petabitoko
  • petabajto1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
  • petabitoko1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
Finnish petatavu
  • petatavu1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
French pétaoctet
  • pétaoctet1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
German Petabyte
  • Petabyte1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
Greek πεταμπάιτ, πεταδυφιοσυλλαβή
  • πεταμπάιτ (petampáit)1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
  • πεταδυφιοσυλλαβή (petadyfiosyllaví)1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
Hungarian petabyte
  • petabyte1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
Japanese ペタバイト
  • ペタバイト (petabaito)1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
Korean 페타바이트
  • 페타바이트 (petabaiteu)1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
Malay petabait
  • petabait1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
Polish petabajt
  • petabajt1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
Portuguese petabyte
  • petabyte1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
Russian петаба́йт
  • петаба́йт (petabájt)1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
Thai เพตะไบต์
  • เพตะไบต์1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes
Cite this entry
APA

petabyte. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/petabyte

MLA

“petabyte.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/petabyte. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “petabyte,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/petabyte.

Source: petabyte on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.