What do we call "bit"? = "binary digit"

} Is "bit" an acronym, when it stands for binary digit. If as, I } suspect, it isn't what do we call such words?
"Portmanteau words", from Lewis Carroll's work.

R. J. Valentine

[nq:1]} Is "bit" an acronym, when it stands for binary digit. If as, I } suspect, it isn't what do we call such words? "Portmanteau words", from Lewis Carroll's work.[/nq]
AKA "blends." See
http://www.bartleby.com/61/48/B0284800.html
and

[nq:1]} Is "bit" an acronym, when it stands for binary digit. If as, I } suspect, it isn't what do we call such words? "Portmanteau words", from Lewis Carroll's work.[/nq]
I had forgotten that that word was in Lewis Carroll, but there it is, in "Through the Looking Glass":
"Well, 'slithy' means 'lithe and slimy'. 'Lithe' is the same as 'active'. You see it's like a portmanteau there are tw

[nq:2]} Is "bit" an acronym, when it stands for binary ... we call such words? "Portmanteau words", from Lewis Carroll's work.[/nq]
[nq:1]I had forgotten that that word was in Lewis Carroll, but there it is, in "Through the Looking Glass": "Well, 'slithy' means 'lithe and slimy'. 'Lithe' is the same as 'active'. You see it's like a portmanteau there are two meanings packed up into one word."[/

[nq:1]} Is "bit" an acronym, when it stands for binary digit. If as, I } suspect, it isn't what do we call such words? "Portmanteau words", from Lewis Carroll's work.[/nq]
It doesn't seem at all a portmanteau word from where I'm reclining; that would be a blend of two or more words carrying their connotations into the new one. "Bit" is a simple contraction of "binary digit", nothing more.

[nq:1]We were discuing the (most plausible) origin of the term, not the (most frequent) present usage.[/nq]
One thing that occurs to me as a native English speaker, and I think Tukey was a native English speaker (NTTARWT), is that it doesn't seem as likely that someone would get "bit" out of an effort to combine "binary" and "unit". But "bit" as the result of an effort to combine "binary" and

[nq:2]We were discuing the (most plausible) origin of the term, not the (most frequent) present usage.[/nq]
[nq:1]One thing that occurs to me as a native English speaker, and I think Tukey was a native English speaker ... go from there to collapsing it to "bit", especially if you want to get rid of that 'big' in there.[/nq]
This native English-speaker doesn't see it that way. I don't have

[nq:2]We were discuing the (most plausible) origin of the term, not the (most frequent) present usage.[/nq]
[nq:1]One thing that occurs to me as a native English speaker, and I think Tukey was a native English speaker ... to combine 'binary' with 'unit', my first suggestion would be "bunit". It's difficult to then go from "bunit" to "bit".[/nq]
That's why it was a binit before it became bi