eat eat a meal; take a meal; "We did not eat until 10 P.M. because there were so many phone calls"; "I didn't eat yet, so I gladly accept your invitation"
nibble -
bite off very small pieces; "She nibbled on her cracker"
seize with teeth,
bite penetrate or cut, as with a knife; "The fork bit into the surface"
nibble -
bite gently; "The woman tenderly nibbled at her baby's ear"
seize with teeth,
bite penetrate or cut, as with a knife; "The fork bit into the surface"
A nibble (often nybble or even nyble to simulate the spelling of byte) is a four-bit aggregation, or half an octet. As a nibble contains 4 bits, there are sixteen (2) possible values, so a nibble corresponds to a single hexadecimal digit (thus, it is often referred to as a "hex digit" or "hexit"). One early recorded use of the term "nybble" was in 1977 within the consumer-banking technology group at Citibank that created a pre-ISO 8583 standard for transactional messages, between cash machines and Citibank's data centers, in which a nybble was the basic informational unit.
