Word Confusion: Bight vs Bite vs Byte

Posted June 11, 2019 by kddidit in Author Resources, Self-Editing, Word Confusions, Writing

Revised as of
27 June 2023

Here’s a sound bite for ya: “Don’t confuse what your teeth do with byte” (GrammarBook). Now . . . you may make use of your teeth with a bight — I’m always tugging away at a loop with my teeth when trying to unknot it.

A bight is either a maritime geographical location or a knot. It is nothing to do with light, ahem, as in “bright”.

A bite takes a chunk out of something: food, joy, ice, hopes, tastebuds, goodness, etc.

A byte tends to add up, eight bits at a time, to create words, text, story, and more.

Bight Addendum

I ran across bight in my list of future confusions and found it was easily confused with bite and byte, so it made sense to add bight in. It’s been an interesting research journey. Oy. The number of sentences I ran across that used bight…and it was a typo for bright. Just goes to show you can’t trust what you read online. This is also a warning, as I could not find sentences using bight as a verb, and the ones I’m using below in Examples are what I’m “guessing” is the intention of the verb definition. Please, if you know of better examples, TELL me!!

Word Confusions . . .

. . . started as my way of dealing with a professional frustration with properly spelled words that were out of context in manuscripts I was editing as well as books I was reviewing. It evolved into a sharing of information with y’all. I’m hoping you’ll share with us words that have been a bête noire for you from either end.

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Bight Bite Byte

A red rope with white and black lines is tied in an intricate knot

Bowline in a Bight is Marcus Bärlocher‘s own work and is in the public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.


Young woman biting an apple

Beautiful Young Woman Biting Green Apple by Amanda Mills is under the CC0 license, via Pixnio.

It’ll be her first bite.


Graphic showing a group of eight bits in a row

Bits and Bytes by Fcarmody is under the CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikipedia.com.

Part of Grammar:
Noun; Verb, transitive

Plural for the noun: bights
Gerund: bighting

Third person present verb: bights
Past tense or past participle: bighted
Present participle: bighting

Noun;
Verb, intransitive & transitive

Plural for the noun: bites
Gerund: biting

Third person present verb: bites
Past tense: bit
Past participle: bitten
Present participle: biting

Noun

Plural: bytes

Noun:
A curve or recess in a coastline, river, or other geographical feature

  • A bend or curve in the shore of a sea or river
  • A body of water bounded by such a bend
  • A bay or gulf

[Knots] A loop of rope, as distinct from the rope’s ends

  • [Knots] The middle part of a rope, as distinguished from the ends
  • [Knots] The slack middle part of an extended rope

A corner, bend, or angle

  • A hollow

Verb, transitive:
To fasten with a loop of rope

Noun:
An act of biting something in order to eat it

  • A wound inflicted by an animal’s or a person’s teeth
  • A wound inflicted by a snake, insect, or spider
  • An act of bait being taken by a fish
  • [Dentistry] The bringing together of the teeth in occlusion
  • [Dentistry] The imprint of the teeth in occlusion in a plastic material

A piece cut off by biting

  • [Informal] A quick snack
  • A small morsel of prepared food, intended to constitute one mouthful
  • A short piece of information

A sharp or pungent flavor

  • Incisiveness or cogency of style
  • A feeling of cold in the air or wind

Verb, intransitive:
To press the teeth into something

  • Snap

[Angling; of fish] To take bait

To accept an offer or suggestion, especially one intended to trick or deceive

[Informal] To admit defeat in guessing

To act effectively

  • Grip
  • Hold

[Slang] To be notably repellent, disappointing, poor, etc.

  • Suck

Verb, transitive:
[Of a person or animal] Use the teeth to cut into something in order to eat it

  • [Of an animal or a person] Use the teeth in order to inflict injury on
  • [Of a snake, insect, or spider] Wound with fangs, pincers, or a sting
  • [Of an animal; bite at] Snap at
    • Attempt to bite
  • [Of an acid] Corrode a surface
  • [Of a fish] Take the bait or lure on the end of a fishing line into the mouth
  • [Informal; of a person] Be persuaded to accept a deal or offer

[Of a tool, tire, boot, etc.] Grip a surface

  • [Of an object] Press into a part of the body, causing pain
  • Cause emotional pain
  • [Of a policy or situation] Take effect, with unpleasant consequences
  • [North American; informal] Be very bad, unpleasant, or unfortunate
[Computing] A group of binary digits or bits (usually eight) operated on as a unit, as a series of eight zeros and ones

  • A unit of memory size

The combination of bits used to represent a particular letter, number, or special character

Examples:
Noun:
The Great Australian Bight is a unique environment that is home to a variety of iconic marine species and supports Australia’s largest commercial fishery for southern bluefin tuna.

The Bight of Benin was the scene of extensive slave trading between the 16th and the 19th century” (Editors).

There is a controversy in the knots world as to whether bights and loops are distinct.

“The bowline on a bight is a knot which makes a pair of fixed-size loops in the middle of a rope, useful for forming a loop in the middle of a rope” (Bowline).

I spied a bight of meadow some way below the roadway in an angle of the river.

“I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking” (Conrad).

“They’re buried tightly in the seat bight, the area between the seat’s back and bottom cushion” (The Washington Post).

“The bight of the reins (the connected end portion) is off the right side of the horse’s neck — underneath your right rein” (Rein).

Verb, transitive:
I could just drift, he thought, and sleep and put a bight of line around my toe to wake me.

Pull until the U-shaped bight is about 6-inches long and the knot is snug.

Cross the bight over the two ropes you are holding in your left hand and through the loop that has formed.

Noun:
Stephen ate a hot dog in three big bites.

Perry’s dog had given her a nasty bite.

Eve took a bite out of the apple, and that was that.

His face was covered in mosquito bites.

By four o’clock he still hadn’t had a single bite.

Due to the mandible’s angle and the anterior teeth not making contact, it resulted in an anterior open bite.

Bite registration is one of three main types of dental impressions.

Robyn took a large bite out of her sandwich.

I plan to stop off in the village and have a bite to eat.

I included minced bacon bites with the cheese.

It’s a small bite of interesting thoughts, statistics and references.

The pie had a fresh, lemony bite.

His colorful characterizations brought added bite to the story.

By early October there’s a bite in the air.

Verb, intransitive:
Does your parrot bite?

The fish aren’t biting today.

I knew it was a mistake, but I bit anyway.

I’ll bite, who is it?

This wood is so dry the screws don’t bite.

Oh, man, this bites!

Verb, transitive:
Rosa bit into a cupcake and moaned.

He bit a mouthful from the sandwich.

She had bitten, scratched, and kicked her assailant.

She was bitten by an adder.

It is not unusual for this dog to bite at its owner’s hand.

Chemicals have bitten deep into the stone.

The trout are biting this morning.

We estimate that a hundred or so retailers should bite.

Once on the wet grass, my boots failed to bite.

The handcuffs bit into his wrists.

Cheryl’s betrayal had bitten deep.

It was a few months later when the cuts in art education started to bite.

It bites that your mom won’t let you go.

It takes eight bits to make a byte.

A single byte can be used to represent 28 or 256 different values.

Originally designed to store character data, the byte has become the fundamental unit of measurement for data storage.

A megabyte contains 1,000 x 1,000, or 1,000,000 bytes.

There are 1,024 megabytes in a gigabyte.

Subsequent error-free testing, with the packet set to eight bytes, confirmed that the documentation had been misleading.

Storage is measured in bytes, one byte containing eight bits, and representing storage for one character in European alphabets.

Derivatives:
Adjective: bite-size, bite-sized, bitey, bitier, bitiest

Noun: biter, bitewing
Phrasal Verb
bite something back
History of the Word:
Middle English byght, Old English (before 1000) byht meaning bend, bay; cognate with the Dutch bocht, the German Bucht and akin to Old English boga meaning bend, bow, arch, of Germanic origin and related to the Dutch boog and the German Bogen, also to the Old English būgan meaning bend, stoop, which is of Germanic origin and related to the German biegen. Old English bītan is of Germanic origin and related to the Dutch bijten and the German beissen. 1960s in an arbitrary formation based on bit, as a unit of information expressed as either a 0 or 1 in binary notation, and bite.

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C’mon, get it out of your system, bitch, whine, moan…which words are your pet peeves?

Satisfy your curiosity about other Word Confusions on its homepage or more generally explore the index of self-editing posts. You may also want to more generally explore the index of self-editing posts. You may also want to explore Formatting Tips, Grammar Explanations, Linguistics, Publishing Tips, the Properly Punctuated, Writing Ideas and Resources, and Working Your Website.

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Resources for Bight vs Bite vs Byte

Apple Dictionary.com

“Bite, Byte.” GrammarBook.com. n.d. Web. 4 June 2019. <https://www.grammarbook.com/homonyms/bite-byte.asp>.

“Bowline on a Bight.” Wikipedia Commons. 9 Jan 2021. Web. 12 May 2021. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowline_on_a_bight>.

Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. SDE Classics, 2019. Ch 1, p 15.

Dictionary.com: bight, bite, byte

Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Bight of Benin.” Encyclopædia of Britannica. n.d. Web. 12 May 2021. <https://www.britannica.com/place/Bight-of-Benin>.

“Rein Holds for All Styles of Horseback Riding: Western and English.” American Quarter Horse Association. 10 Apr 2018. Web. 27 June 2023. <https://www.aqha.com/-/rein-holds-for-all-styles-of-horseback-riding>.

SentenceDict.com: bight

WikiDiff: bight

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Pinterest Photo Credits:

Take a Bite is in the public domain, via Pxfuel. Binary Code by geralt is in the public domain, via Pixabay. Nœud de chaise double sur son double is Malta’s own work under the CC BY-SA 2.5 license, via Wikimedia Commons.

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