gigabyte

See also: Gigabyte

English

Etymology

From giga- +‎ byte.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈɡɪɡəbaɪt/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈɡɪɡəbaɪt/, /ˈd͡ʒɪɡəbaɪt/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

Noun

gigabyte (plural gigabytes)

1. (computing, formal) One billion (10⁹, or 1,000,000,000) bytes or 1,000 megabytes.
   • 1981, IBM 3380 Direct Access Storage Description and User's Guide, IBM, page 1:

     The IBM 3380 Direct Access Storage is a disk storage device with a storage capacity of 2.5 gigabytes (billion bytes) per unit, an increase of almost four times the capacity of the IBM 3350 Direct Access Storage.

   • 2007 August 2, larry Magid, “On a Home Network, the Right Drive Means Storage for All”, in The New York Times‎^[1], →ISSN, archived from the original on 9 November 2020:

     It does not take much effort these days to accumulate several hundred gigabytes of data. A few hundred songs, a couple of vacations’ worth of photos, a dozen movies and television programs — and suddenly the 80 gigabyte hard drive in the notebook computer is straining.

   • 2008 June 15, Brian Stelter, “To Curb Traffic on the Internet, Access Providers Consider Charging by the Gigabyte”, in The New York Times‎^[2], →ISSN, archived from the original on 15 January 2018:

     In that trial, new customers can buy plans with a 5-gigabyte cap, a 20-gigabyte cap or a 40-gigabyte cap. Prices for those plans range from $30 to $50. Above the cap, customers pay $1 a gigabyte. Plans with higher caps come with faster service.

   • 2022 April 15, Steven Johnson, “A.I. Is Mastering Language. Should We Trust What It Says?”, in The New York Times‎^[3], →ISSN, archived from the original on 16 July 2022:

     GPT-3 belongs to a category of deep learning known as a large language model, a complex neural net that has been trained on a titanic data set of text: in GPT-3’s case, roughly 700 gigabytes of data drawn from across the web, including Wikipedia, supplemented with a large collection of text from digitized books. GPT-3 is the most celebrated of the large language models, and the most publicly available, but Google, Meta (formerly known as Facebook) and DeepMind have all developed their own L.L.M.s in recent years.

2. (computing, informal) A gibibyte.

Synonyms

• GB
• gig (informal)

Coordinate terms

• Previous: megabyte
• Next: terabyte

Derived terms

• multigigabyte
• subgigabyte

Related terms

• gibibit
• gibibyte
• gigabit

Translations

one billion bytes

• Arabic: غِيغَابَايْت m (ḡīḡabayt)
• Armenian: գիգաբայտ (gigabayt)
• Azerbaijani: giqabayt
• Belarusian: гігаба́йт m (hihabájt)
• Bulgarian: ги́габайт m (gígabajt)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: (formal) 千兆字節 / 千兆字节 (qiān zhàozìjié), (common abbreviation, pronounced like English) GB, G (zh)

• Cornish: gigabayt m
• Czech: gigabyte m, gigabajt m
• Dutch: gigabyte (nl) m
• Esperanto: gigabajto, gigabitoko
• Finnish: gigatavu (fi)
• French: gigaoctet (fr)
• Galician: xigabyte m
• Georgian: გიგაბაიტი (gigabaiṭi)
• German: Gigabyte (de) n
• Greek: γκιγκαμπάιτ n (gkigkampáit), γιγαδυφιοσυλλαβή n (gigadyfiosyllaví)
• Hebrew: גיגבייט m (gigabayt)
• Hindi: गीगाबाइट m (gīgābāiṭ)
• Hungarian: gigabyte (hu)
• Icelandic: gígabæti
• Japanese: ギガバイト (ja) (gigabaito)
• Korean: 기가바이트 (gigabaiteu)
• Macedonian: гигабајт m (gigabajt)
• Malay: gigabait
• Marathi: गिगाबाइट m (gigābāiṭ)
• Navajo: dį́į́łtsohʼííłké
• Persian: گیگابایت (gigâbâyt)
• Polish: gigabajt (pl) m
• Portuguese: gigabyte (pt) m
• Russian: гигаба́йт (ru) m (gigabájt)
• Slovak: gigabajt m
• Spanish: gigabyte (es) m
• Swahili: gigabaiti
• Swedish: gigabyte (sv) c
• Thai: จิกะไบต์ (th) (jì-gà-bái), กิกะไบต์ (th) (gì-gà-bái)
• Tibetan: ཡིག་ཚིགས་ཐེར་འབུམ (yig tshigs ther 'bum)
• Turkish: gigabayt
• Ukrainian: гігаба́йт m (hihabájt)
• Uyghur: گىگابايت (gigabayt)
• Yiddish: גיגאַבײַט (gigabayt)

Czech

Alternative forms

• gigabajt

Etymology

From giga- +‎ byte.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): [ˈɡɪɡabajt]

Noun

gigabyte m inan

1. gigabyte

Declension

Declension of gigabyte (hard masculine inanimate foreign)

	singular	plural
nominative	gigabyte	gigabyty
genitive	gigabytu	gigabytů
dative	gigabytu	gigabytům
accusative	gigabyte	gigabyty
vocative	gigabyte	gigabyty
locative	gigabytu	gigabytech
instrumental	gigabytem	gigabyty

Further reading

• “byte”, in Akademický slovník cizích slov at prirucka.ujc.cas.cz [Academic dictionary of foreign words] (in Czech), 1995

Italian

Etymology

From giga- +‎ byte.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /d͡ʒi.ɡaˈba.it/
• Rhymes: -ait

Noun

gigabyte m (invariable)

1. (computing) gigabyte

Portuguese

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English gigabyte.

Pronunciation

 

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /ˌʒi.ɡaˈbaj.t͡ʃi/ [ˌʒi.ɡaˈbaɪ̯.t͡ʃi], /ˌʒi.ɡaˈbajt͡ʃ/ [ˌʒi.ɡaˈbaɪ̯t͡ʃ]

• (Brazil) IPA^(key): /ˌʒi.ɡaˈbaj.t͡ʃi/ [ˌʒi.ɡaˈbaɪ̯.t͡ʃi], /ˌʒi.ɡaˈbajt͡ʃ/ [ˌʒi.ɡaˈbaɪ̯t͡ʃ]
  • (Southern Brazil) IPA^(key): /ˌʒi.ɡaˈbajt͡ʃ/ [ˌʒi.ɡaˈbaɪ̯t͡ʃ], /ˌʒi.ɡaˈbaj.t͡ʃi/ [ˌʒi.ɡaˈbaɪ̯.t͡ʃi]

• (Portugal) IPA^(key): /ˌʒi.ɡɐˈbajt/ [ˌʒi.ɣɐˈβajt]

Noun

gigabyte m (plural gigabytes)

1. (computing) gigabyte (one billion bytes)

   Synonyms: (symbol) GB, (informal) giga

Coordinate terms

• Multiples of the byte: kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte, terabyte, petabyte, exabyte, zettabyte, yottabyte

Related terms

• gigabit
• gibibyte

Further reading

• “gigabyte”, in Dicionário Aulete Digital (in Portuguese), Rio de Janeiro: Lexikon Editora Digital, 2008–2026
• “gigabyte”, in Dicionário Priberam da Língua Portuguesa (in Portuguese), Lisbon: Priberam, 2008–2026

Spanish

Alternative forms

• gigabait, guigabait, yigabait

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English gigabyte, equivalent to giga- +‎ byte.

Pronunciation

 

• IPA^(key): /ʝiɡaˈbait/ [ɟ͡ʝi.ɣ̞aˈβ̞ai̯t̪]

• IPA^(key): /ʝiɡaˈbait/ [ɟ͡ʝi.ɣ̞aˈβ̞ai̯t̪] (everywhere but Argentina and Uruguay)
• IPA^(key): /ʃiɡaˈbait/ [ʃi.ɣ̞aˈβ̞ai̯t̪] (Buenos Aires and environs)
• IPA^(key): /ʒiɡaˈbait/ [ʒi.ɣ̞aˈβ̞ai̯t̪] (elsewhere in Argentina and Uruguay)

• IPA^(key): /xiɡaˈbait/ [xi.ɣ̞aˈβ̞ai̯t̪]
• Rhymes: -ait
• Syllabification: gi‧ga‧by‧te

Noun

gigabyte m (plural gigabytes)

1. (computing) gigabyte
   • 2015 October 28, “Google tiene 3,8 millones de GB de nuestras fotos”, in CNN en Español‎^[4]:

     Necesitarías 3 millones 809.280 memorias flash de un gigabyte para almacenar todas esas fotos. […] Necesitarías cuando menos 238,080 iPhones S6 con 16 gigabytes de memoria para guardarlas.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

Further reading

• “gigabyte”, in Diccionario de la lengua española [Dictionary of the Spanish Language] (in Spanish), online version 23.8.1, Royal Spanish Academy [Spanish: Real Academia Española], 15 December 2025