Meanings
plural petabytes
- One quadrillion (10¹⁵, or 1,000,000,000,000,000) bytes or 1,000 terabytes.
- 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 20242 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 2016The 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
nouna unit of information equal to 1000 terabytes or 10^15 bytes
nouna unit of information equal to 1024 tebibytes or 2^50 bytes
Synonym sets from Open English WordNet, CC BY 4.0.
Origin
- Englishpeta-
- Proto-Indo-European*bʰeyd-
- Proto-Indo-European*bʰéydt
- Proto-Germanic*bītaną
- Proto-West Germanic*bītan
- Old Englishbītan
- Middle Englishbiten
- Englishbite
- Englishbyte
- Englishpetabyte
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
petabyte. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/petabyte
“petabyte.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/petabyte. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “petabyte,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/petabyte.
Source: petabyte on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.