Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
kilobyte

kilobyte

4 3.6
A small measure of computer data, about 1,000 bytes
  • noun
  • /ˈkɪləˌbaɪt/
  • Specialized
translation icon : kilobyte
  • Pages crawled, kilobytes downloaded, and time spent downloading a page live here.
  • 64 kilobytes
  • few kilobytes

Examples

  • He said the software update was about 150 kilobytes in size, so it wouldn't take long to download.

  • There's only two kilobytes of erasable memory, and they need that for data storage.

    Fiction book (1996)

  • First of all, limit comments to a certain size, maybe 1 kilobyte or so.

    Blog text (4)

  • As an example, let us assume that the message is one kilobyte long.

    Academic text (1997)

  • So, if it was one cent per kilobyte and I used one hundred kilobytes, what would my charge be?

    Blog text (1)

  • It also had a 32-kilobyte ROM.

    Blinded by the Light (2019)

  • We knew 128 kilobytes wasn't gonna get it done when we built it.

    Jobs (2013)

  • Sidney read the figures slowly: 1,356,600 kilobytes, or about 1.3 gigs, of hard drive were available.

    Fiction book (1997)

  • Both the instruction cache and data cache were 64 kilobytes.

    Academic text (2000)

  • The DATAQ-CF2 consists of a 24-bit compact flash data acquisition card with 32 kilobytes of RAM.

    Academic text (2003)

Synonyms

KB
vskilobyte
  • Specialized
4 3.0

A unit for measuring the size of digital files or memory, about 1,000 bytes

is the basic unit name that commonly refers to either 1024 or 1000 bytes
K
vskilobyte
  • Specialized
3 3.5

A unit of computer data equal to about 1,000 bytes

is the standard name for that measure, allowing either 1024 or sometimes 1000 bytes
kB
vskilobyte
  • Specialized
1 3.5

A unit of digital information of about 1,000 bytes used to measure computer file size

is the general unit term that can mean either 1024 or sometimes 1000 bytes
KiB
vskilobyte
  • Specialized
7.6

A unit for measuring computer storage equal to 1024 bytes

allows a less strict value, meaning either 1024 or sometimes 1000 bytes
kibibyte
vskilobyte
  • Specialized
7.6

A unit of computer data equal to 1024 bytes

is a more ambiguous unit name that can mean 1024 or occasionally 1000 bytes

How Big

EB
  • Specialized
1 8.4
petabyte
  • Specialized
2 7.2
terabyte
  • Specialized
8 4.1
gigabyte
  • Specialized
13 2.7
megabyte
  • Specialized
10 3.0
kilobyte
  • Specialized
4 3.6
byte
  • Specialized
23 3.6

Surface Forms

kilobyte singular
kilobytes plural

Morphology

kilobyte = byte (semi-transparent) = kilo + byte

The word is clearly formed by the productive prefix 'kilo-' plus 'byte', but the exact numeric interpretation (1024 vs 1000) is technical and may confuse learners.

Etymology

The word kilobyte comes from kilo- meaning 'thousand' and byte from the English word 'bite', meaning a small piece of information. So a kilobyte is a 'thousand bites' of data used to measure file size, though in computing it often meant 1024 bytes.