digit
pronunciation
How to pronounce digit in British English:
UK [ˈdɪdʒɪt]
How to pronounce digit in American English:
US [ˈdɪdʒɪt]
-
- Noun:
- one of the elements that collectively form a system of numbers
- the length of breadth of a finger used as a linear measure
- a finger or toe in human beings or corresponding part in other vertebrates
Word Origin
- digit
- digit: [15] Digit was borrowed from Latin digitus. This meant ‘finger or toe’, but its underlying etymological sense is probably ‘pointer’; it appears to come from an Indo-European base *deik-, which also produced Latin dicere ‘say’ (originally ‘point out’), Greek deiknúnai ‘show’, Sanskrit diç- ‘show’, and possibly English toe.The word was used in classical times for a measure of length, a ‘finger’s breadth’, but the mathematical sense ‘any of the numbers from 0 to 9’ (originally as counted on the fingers) is a later development. Digitalis [17], the scientific name of the ‘foxglove’, is a modern Latin use of the Latin adjective digitālis ‘of the finger’, perhaps in allusion to the foxglove’s German name fingerhut ‘thimble’, literally ‘finger-hat’.=> toe
- digit (n.)
- late 14c., "numeral below 10," from Latin digitus "finger or toe" (also with secondary meanings dealing in counting and numerals), related to dicere "tell, say, point out" (see diction). Numerical sense is because numerals under 10 were counted on fingers. The "finger or toe" sense in English is attested from 1640s.
Example
- 1. On average , the company has had double digit sales growth since 1993 .
- 2. In the second case , they were instructed to count how many times a given digit appeared .
- 3. An abacus is essentially an array of beads threaded on string or held in grooves , with each row representing a different digit .
- 4. You 'll need the twenty-one digit account number-for example , " 112374836634096795698 " is my account number .
- 5. This mirrors differences in the sensitivity and size of areas in the brain 's somatosensory cortex that are thought to represent each digit , probably by making use of visual , mechanical and tactile feedback .