bit

\bit\

/\bit\/ noun

The verdict

“bit” sits in 20 confusable pairs (corpus #16,817) as a noun. The look-alike neighbours are the real trap.

#16,817
frequency rank, French
4,251
“B” headwords
20
confusable pairs

According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - Unité de mesure en informatique désignant la quantité élémentaire d’information représentée par un chiffre binaire, et qui ne peut donc prendre que deux valeurs : 0 ou 1.

Corpus desk

Index FR-bit · bit · French

bit · rank #16,817 · 0 variants · 20 confusables

  • FREQ-MID #16,817
  • LEN-MID 3 letters
  • VOW-1 1 vowel
  • CONFUS-HIGH 20 pairs
  • VAR-0 0 variants
  • BOOK-MID 4,251
  • PHOTO-FINISH blacks

Nearest frequency peer: blacks (+1 rank slots)

Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.

Voisins de fréquence du confusable « bit »

Pairs de poids proche dans le corpus, séparés des confusables ci-dessous

corpus weight

What this shows Les barres placent « bit » face aux lemmes français les plus proches par rang, pas un reprint du bureau des confusables.

Source FrequencyWords open word-frequency list As of September 3, 2026

Visual similarity to commonly confused words

How many letter changes separate each confused pair (Levenshtein distance, normalized).

bit vs by
33% similar
bit vs bu
33% similar
bit vs Br
0% similar

Source: PlainSpell confusable corpus (Wiktionary, CC BY-SA).

Key facts for bit
PropertyValue
Headwordbit
LanguageFrench
Part of speechNoun
IPA\bit\
Letters3
Frequency rank#16,817
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs20
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Rang de corpus près des confusables de « bit »

La fréquence va de la poignée de mots du quotidien (gauche) à la longue queue presque jamais vue (droite).bitse place ici:

#1#100#1K#10K#100K
← used constantlyrarely used →

L'échelle est logarithmique (chaque tic ≈ 10× plus rare). Dans la même bande de rareté figurent « blacks » (#16,818), « barons » (#16,815), « blondes » (#16,819). Parmi 4,251 lemmes en « B », « bit » est au #16,817. Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list.

Easy to mix with look-alikes

The spelling risk for bit is neighbouring look-alikes ("by", "bu", …), not just typos; it is anoun pronounced \bit\. Frequency #16,817 among 4,251 “B” headwords. 2 recorded senses keep meaning in play.

bit doesn't appear in our generated misspelling index, since its letter pattern doesn't lend itself to common typo substitutions. It also participates in 20 confusable-pair relationships, "by", "bu", "Br", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.

No documented word history exists for this headword, so spelling patterns must be inferred from the word's phoneme-to-grapheme mapping rather than from a documented borrowing chain. The correct French form is bit, spelled B-I-T.

Definition

  1. 1
    Unité de mesure en informatique désignant la quantité élémentaire d’information représentée par un chiffre binaire, et qui ne peut donc prendre que deux valeurs : 0 ou 1.
  2. 2
    Par extension "bits quantiques".

Recorded use

Wiktionary examples

These source excerpts show how bit appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.

  1. le nibble = 4 bits et l’octet = 8 bits.
  2. Les processeurs 64-bits sont à la mode.

This word in other languages

Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA); frequency ordering uses the FrequencyWords open word-frequency list (2018 French corpus, MIT). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "bit"?
"bit" is spelled B-I-T. The IPA pronunciation is \bit\.
What does "bit" mean?
As a noun, "bit" means: Unité de mesure en informatique désignant la quantité élémentaire d’information représentée par un chiffre binaire, et qui ne peut donc prendre que deux valeurs : 0 ou 1.
What words are commonly confused with "bit"?
"bit" is commonly confused with "by", "bu", "Br". These words look or sound similar but have different meanings. PlainSpell provides detailed comparisons for each pair.
How do you pronounce "bit"?
The IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) transcription for "bit" is \bit\. Click the speaker icon on the pronunciation badge above to hear it spoken aloud where audio is available.
What language does "bit" come from?
"bit" is a French word. PlainSpell covers definitions, pronunciations, and spelling data across English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

Similar French words by spelling shape

Same letter count and similar misspelling depth for "bit", not the corpus desk frequency band.

Same letter count

Frequency-ranked French headwords with 3 letters (nearest by frequency rank).

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list