Wordorigins.org

Blackmail derives from the old practice of clan chieftains who ran protection rackets against farmers in the Scottish-English border counties. If the farmers did not pay the mail, the chiefs would steal their crops and cattle. This sense of mail is from Old English meaning rent or tribute and ultimately comes from the Old Icelandic mál, meaning speech or agreement. (This is one of those Old English words introduced by Viking raiders.) This sense is unrelated to other senses of mail and is now obsolete except for its use in blackmail.

One of the more frequently asked questions on this site’s discussion group is where the term two bits comes from. Most people know that two bits are worth 25 cents, but the origin is a mystery to them.

Bit, which ultimately comes from the Old English bita, originally meant a morsel of food. From there it went on to denote any small thing, particularly a fraction of a larger whole. By the beginning of the 17th century, bit had become a thieves’ cant term for money. In 1607, Thomas Dekker, a 17th century comic writer, penned the following in his 1607 Jests to Make You Merie:

If they ... once know where the bung and the bit is, so much as to say your purse and the money…

By 1683 in the English-speaking American colonies bit had come to specifically denote a Spanish/Mexican real, or one eighth of a peso (the famed pieces of eight). The Colonial Records of Pennsylvania of that year record the following:

Their Abuse to y^e Governm^t, in Quining of Spanish Bitts and Boston money.

The Spanish peso was a common form of currency in the colonies. And in the early days of the United States, pesos were commonly used as dollar coins and real coins represented twelve and half cents, hence two bits equaled 25 cents.

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition)

Many people wonder where these two computer terms come from. Of the two, bit is older, dating to 1948. It first appears in A Mathematical Theory of Communication by C.E. Shannon in Bell Systems Technical Journal in July and October of that year. (This paper is one of the seminal works of modern information theory. The fact that it is the first known use of bit is simply a footnote to its scientific importance.) In the paper, Shannon credits a J.W. Tukey with the coinage:

The choice of a logarithmic base corresponds to the choice of a unit for measuring information. If the base 2 is used the resulting units may be called binary digits, or more briefly bits, a word suggested by J. W. Tukey.

As Shannon indicates, bit is an abbreviated form of binary digit, chosen probably because it is also a play on the meaning of the then existing word bit signifying a small part.

The term byte is of less certain origin, but probably was coined by someone at IBM (perhaps a Dr. Werner Buchholz) around 1964. The word byte is a play on bit. The original sense of the term was the amount of data required to represent one character—usually, but not always, eight bits. Over time, the predominant sense shifted to mean eight bits exactly.

The first citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from an article by Messrs. Blaauw and Brooks in a 1964 issue of the IBM Systems Journal:

An 8-bit unit of information is fundamental to most of the formats [of the System/360]. A consecutive group of n such units constitutes a field of length n. Fixed-length fields of length one, two, four, and eight are termed bytes, halfwords, words, and double words respectively.

Some have suggested that it is an abbreviation for BInary digiT Eight and that the Y was substituted for the I so to prevent typographical confusion with bit. Another suggestion is that it is from BinarY TErm. Neither of these claims is well substantiated and are probably false.

Also playful, but less well known, is the term nybble or nibble, meaning half a byte, or four bits.

(Sources: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition; Safire’s Quoth the Maven; Carver’s A History of English in Its Own Words)

This term for an important person dates to the 18th century. It’s a reference to the powdered wigs that men wore back then. Rich and important men would have larger, more expensive wigs, hence the term.

Slang etymologist Eric Partridge dates the term to 1731, but provides no citation or context for the usage. This, like many of Partridge’s dates, is suspect. The earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary is from a 1781 letter by English politician George Selwyn, who is notable for having served 44 years in the House of Commons without ever once making a speech:

A new point of discussion for the lawyers, for our big wigs, for their Lordships.

Contrary to the bit of internet folklore that is floating about, men did not shave their heads under the wigs (or at least most didn’t) and the wigs were not placed in a loaf of bread and baked in order to clean them. That is simply absurd.

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition)

This name for New York City was originally horse-racing slang that made its way into the vernacular. The metaphor is that New York City is a succulent and sweet prize to be had for those who are successful in racing or any field of endeavor.

Big apple was commonly used in the late-19th century to refer to the winnings of a wager. This use appears as early as the August 1847 issue of The American Farmer:

Try it once and we’ll bet you a big apple that you do it every year thereafter for the balance of your life.