At 09:25 PM 3/17/98 -0800, you wrote: >Blad Cap wrote: >> The origin of nibble is quite obscure. I think this is a pure modern >> programmer's jargon rarely being met in literature. >Here's a copy of the message I sent two weeks ago on the subject... >Maybe you missed it? >"Nibble" is, obviously, a back-formation of "byte"; it's half a byte >(4 bits, or one hexadecimal digit). Although it's often spelled >"nybble" -- especially by non-programmers -- that spelling implies >that it's pronounced "nigh-ble"; every programmer _I_ know spells it >"nibble". I think the problem may be that non-english speakers may not know that a nibble is a very small bite. A mouse nibbles on cheese. Some ladies, when they want to be very dainty, will nibble on finger food. (Cookies, tarts, etc.) By the way, some of us do spell it nybble when discussing a half byte value. (A hex digit or part of a BCD byte.) I won't even go into the subject of the phonetics of the "so-called" english language. (How can you mix half a dozen languages together and call the result a language????) I will mention that we should be thankful that nybble does not rhyme with orange! ;-) (For non-native english speakers, the inside joke is that the word "rhyme" is pronounced as if it were spelled rime. Rime really is a word in the english language, and is an alternate spelling of rhyme, but it also means a coating of frost, and is most commonly used in this sense.)