Units of digital information equal to one billion bits, commonly used to measure data transfer speeds on the internet or storage capacity.
From the prefix 'giga-' (Greek for 'giant,' meaning one billion) combined with 'bit,' short for 'binary digit.' The term emerged in computing during the late 20th century as data speeds and storage needs grew exponentially.
Your home internet might be advertised as 1 gigabit per second (Gbps), but that's actually 125 megabytes per second in practical download speeds—manufacturers use gigabits because the number sounds more impressive!
Complete word intelligence in one call. Free tier — 50 lookups/day.