Definition of bit bucket
bit bucket
noun
- The place where all lost mail and news messages eventually go.
- The universal data sink (originally, the mythical receptacle used to catch bits when they fall off the end of a register during a shift instruction). Discarded, lost, or destroyed data is said to have "gone to the bit bucket". Sometimes amplified as "the Great Bit Bucket in the Sky".
- Excuse for all mail that has not been sent.
I mailed you those figures last week; they must have landed in the bit bucket.
- This term is used purely in jest. It is based on the fanciful notion that bits are objects that are not destroyed but only misplaced. This appears to have been a mutation of an earlier term "bit box", about which the same legend was current; old-time hackers also report that trainees used to be told that when the CPU stored bits into memory it was actually pulling them "out of the bit box."
- The ideal location for all unwanted mail responses:
Flames about this article to the bit bucket.
Discover slang words with the same meaning:
Slang terms with the same root words:
- bucket: a drop in the bucket – brain bucket – (show 5 more)
- bit: bit rot – chomp at the bit – (show 8 more)
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