# Meaning of phrase "two-bit character" **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 3, 2012, 1:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaning-of-phrase-two-bit-character/636579 "2012-10-03T13:35:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Double\_Foolscap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85e7bf/32.png) [@Double\_Foolscap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Double_Foolscap)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2012, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaning-of-phrase-two-bit-character/636579/21 "2012-10-04T11:00:33Z")
> [@Raguleader](#): > > On a more serious note, I wonder if this is where the 8 bits to a byte thing came from? My school computing book said that bit was short for “binary digit”. ---
**Author:** ![leahcim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b4bc9f/32.png) [@leahcim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leahcim)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2012, 11:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaning-of-phrase-two-bit-character/636579/22 "2012-10-04T11:05:56Z")
> [@Raguleader](#): > > On a more serious note, I wonder if this is where the 8 bits to a byte thing came from? Unlikely. I understand that the 8-bit byte arose with IBM in the 60s and before that things were less standardized. ASCII after all is a 7-bit code, and the predecessor to EBCDIC was 6-bit code. ---
**Author:** ![Darth\_Panda](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ee7513/32.png) [@Darth\_Panda](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darth_Panda)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2012, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaning-of-phrase-two-bit-character/636579/23 "2012-10-04T11:33:00Z")
Can we start making jokes about 2-bit code? ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2012, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaning-of-phrase-two-bit-character/636579/24 "2012-10-04T13:17:31Z")
> [@leahcim](#): > > Unlikely. I understand that the 8-bit byte arose with IBM in the 60s and before that things were less standardized. ASCII after all is a 7-bit code, and the predecessor to EBCDIC was 6-bit code. ASCII is 7 bit to allow a parity bit on transmission of an 8 bit byte representing a character. ---
**Author:** ![Francis\_Vaughan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/francis_vaughan/32/3093_2.png) [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2012, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaning-of-phrase-two-bit-character/636579/25 "2012-10-04T13:43:25Z")
> [@Raguleader](#): > > On a more serious note, I wonder if this is where the 8 bits to a byte thing came from? The term “bit” was coined by John Tukey, who suggested it to Claude Shannon, who used it in his seminal 1948 paper “A Mathematical Theory of Communication.” As noted above, it is a contraction of “binary digit”. Tukey is perhaps best remembered as one half of the Cooley-Tukey Fast Fourier Transform algorithm. It is impossible to understate how much in modern life we owe to these guys. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2012, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaning-of-phrase-two-bit-character/636579/26 "2012-10-04T13:58:07Z")
> [@Darth\_Panda](#): > > Can we start making jokes about 2-bit code? Yeah, when I read the thread title, I thought something along the lines of “a character that only has four states?” but I couldn’t really work that into a joke. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [October 4, 2012, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaning-of-phrase-two-bit-character/636579/27 "2012-10-04T14:04:21Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > Yeah, when I read the thread title, I thought something along the lines of “a character that only has four states?” but I couldn’t really work that into a joke. Maybe something about a ranger who works out at Four Corners Monument? ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2012, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaning-of-phrase-two-bit-character/636579/28 "2012-10-07T13:10:52Z")
I actually don’t think we’ve quite answered the question. Calling someone a two-bit character does mean that they are cheap, but not in the way we normally mean it. It means they aren’t worth much–they are insignificant. Normally, if we call someone cheap, we mean they are thrifty in a negative way. I think the two different meanings of cheap are what was confusing the OP; otherwise the definition he found online would have been sufficient. ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2012, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaning-of-phrase-two-bit-character/636579/29 "2012-10-07T21:12:06Z")
Indeed. Having lost most of the little worth they had in the past, two-bit characters are now a dime a dozen. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/meaning-of-phrase-two-bit-character/636579.md?page=1)