kilobyte

Coined in the 1960s, from kilo- (“thousand”) +‎ byte.

• Audio (US):

  (file)

kilobyte (plural kilobytes)

1. (computing, especially networking) One thousand (10³, or 1,000) bytes.
   • 1969, Harold R. Dell, HIGH-DENSITY PERMANENT DATA STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM‎^[1], US Patent 3638185:

     The data word processor 606 handles the in-flow and out-flow of byte-oriented input/output data and interleaved signals at a rate of, for example, 500 kilobytes per second. Instruction processing rates of four to eight per microsecond are required for such a data flow.

2. (computing, informal, especially RAM) A kibibyte.
   • 1969, Hisashi Horikoshi, MEMORY CONTROL SYSTEM‎^[2], US Patent 3618041:

     It is assumed herein that each block includes 32 bytes, each sector includes 1 kilobyte, the buffer memory 116 includes 4 kilobytes, and read data is represented by one double word or 64 bits, as one word in this case consists of 32 bits.

• kB, KB, ㎅

• Previous: byte
• Next: megabyte

• kibibit
• kilobit

• kilobajt

From kilo- +‎ byte.

• IPA^(key): [ˈkɪlobajt]

kilobyte m inan

1. kilobyte

• “kilobyte”, in Kartotéka Novočeského lexikálního archivu (in Czech)
• “byte”, in Akademický slovník cizích slov at prirucka.ujc.cas.cz [Academic dictionary of foreign words] (in Czech), 1995

From kilo- +‎ byte.

kilobyte m (invariable)

1. (computing) kilobyte

Unadapted borrowing from English kilobyte, equivalent to kilo- +‎ byte.

kilobyte m (plural kilobytes)

1. (computing) kilobyte (one thousand bytes)

• Abbreviations: KB, kB

• Multiples of the byte: kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, petabyte, exabyte, zettabyte, yottabyte

• kilobit
• kebibyte

Unadapted borrowing from English kilobyte, equivalent to kilo- +‎ byte.

• IPA^(key): /kiloˈbait/ [ki.loˈβ̞ai̯t̪]
• Rhymes: -ait
• Syllabification: ki‧lo‧byte

kilobyte m (plural kilobytes)

1. (computing) kilobyte

According to Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) prescriptions, unadapted foreign words should be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available. In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.

• “kilobyte”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 10 December 2024