Bit
Old English bita ‘bite, mouthful’, of Germanic origin; related to German Bissen, also to bite.
wiktionary
From Middle English bitte, bite, from Old English bita(“bit; fragment; morsel”) and bite(“a bite; cut”), from Proto-Germanic *bitô and *bitiz; both from Proto-Indo-European *bʰeyd-(“to split”).
Cognate with West Frisian bit, Saterland Frisian Bit, Dutch bit, German Low German Beet, Biet, German Biss and Bissen, Danish bid, Swedish bit, Icelandic biti.
See bite
Coined by John Tukey in 1946 as an abbreviation of binary digit, probably influenced by connotations of “small portion”. [1] [2] First used in print 1948 by Claude Shannon. [3] Compare byte and nybble, with similar food associations.
etymonline
bit (n.1)
"small piece," c. 1200; related Old English bite "act of biting," and bita "piece bitten off," which probably are the source of the modern words meaning "boring-piece of a drill" (the "biting" part, 1590s), "mouthpiece of a horse's bridle" (mid-14c.), and "a piece (of food) bitten off, morsel" (c. 1000). All from Proto-Germanic *biton (source also of Old Saxon biti, Old Norse bit, Old Frisian bite, Middle Dutch bete, Old High German bizzo "biting," German Bissen "a bite, morsel"), from PIE root *bheid- "to split."
Meaning "small piece, fragment" of anything is from c. 1600. Sense of "short space of time" is 1650s. Theatrical bit part is from 1909. Money sense "small coin" in two bits, etc. is originally from the U.S. South and the West Indies, in reference to silver wedges cut or stamped from Spanish dollars (later Mexican reals); transferred to "eighth of a dollar."
bit (n.2)
computerese word, 1948, coined by U.S. computer pioneer John W. Tukey, an abbreviation of binary digit, probably chosen for its identity with bit (n.1).
bit (v.)
past tense of bite.
