B
Abbreviation with 5 meanings
| Stands for | Billion |
|---|---|
| Meanings | 5 |
| Categories | Units & Measurements, Science & Engineering, Writing & Everyday |
| Also written | b, b. |
B has five meanings. The most common are Billion (math) and Bit (data unit); it can also stand for Byte, Boron and Born.
Meanings of B at a glance
| # | B stands for | Context |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Billion | Units & Measurements › Math |
| 2 | Bit | Units & Measurements › Data Unit |
| 3 | Byte | Units & Measurements › Data Unit |
| 4 | Boron | Science & Engineering › Chemical Element |
| 5 | Born | Writing & Everyday › Genealogy |
1. Billion
Units & Measurements · Math Abbreviations
Shorthand for billion (a thousand million, 10^9) in headlines, market values and statistics: $3B means three billion dollars. It is common in business news, technology journalism and social media.
Example: The merger values the combined company at $28B including debt.
British and financial journalism prefer bn. In older British usage a billion meant a million million (10^12), but the UK government officially adopted the short-scale billion in 1974. A capital B also means byte in computing, so context separates $3B from 3 B of data.
2. Bit (b)
Units & Measurements · Data Unit Abbreviations
The basic unit of digital information, a single binary digit with the value 0 or 1. Network and broadband speeds are quoted in bits per second, so the lowercase b in Mbps signals bits rather than bytes.
Example: A 100 Mb/s connection moves 100 million b each second, which is only 12.5 megabytes.
The word bit, a contraction of "binary digit", was coined by statistician John Tukey and first published by Claude Shannon in his 1948 paper founding information theory. IEC and IEEE standards prefer the symbol "bit" spelled out, but lowercase b is common in rates. Eight bits make a byte, and four bits are informally a nibble.
3. Byte
Units & Measurements · Data Unit Abbreviations
A unit of digital information made up of eight bits, enough to encode one character of basic text. File sizes, memory and storage capacities are measured in bytes and their multiples, always with a capital B.
Example: The config file is 2,048 B, small enough to paste into a support ticket.
Werner Buchholz coined the term at IBM in 1956 while designing the Stretch computer, deliberately respelling "bite" to avoid confusion with bit. Early computers used bytes of other sizes, so standards documents call an exact 8-bit unit an octet, which is why French uses o, ko, Mo and Go. Mixing up B and b is the most common error when comparing internet speeds with download sizes.
4. Boron
Science & Engineering · Chemical Element Abbreviations
A metalloid with atomic number 5, boron goes into borosilicate laboratory glass, fiberglass insulation, laundry borax and the neodymium-iron-boron magnets used in motors and earbuds. The isotope boron-10 absorbs neutrons strongly, which makes boron carbide and boric acid useful for controlling nuclear reactors.
Example: Leaf tissue analysis showed B at 18 ppm, within the sufficiency range for alfalfa.
Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Louis Jacques Thénard in Paris and Humphry Davy in London reported boron in 1808, though their samples were impure. The name blends borax (from Arabic buraq and Persian burah) with the ending of carbon, which boron resembles in some of its chemistry. A capital B is also the physics symbol for magnetic flux density; context makes the difference clear.
5. Born (b.)
Writing & Everyday · Genealogy Abbreviations
Precedes a date or place of birth in genealogies, biographies, reference works and obituaries, as in "b. 1952" or "b. Chicago." Family trees and encyclopedias use it to save space.
Example: Eleanor Price (b. 1887, Cork; d. 1964, Boston) emigrated with her parents in 1899.
It pairs with d. (died), m. (married) and bur. (buried) in genealogical shorthand. German and other European genealogies often use an asterisk for birth and a dagger for death instead. For a living person, "b. 1952" alone gives the birth year without implying anything else.
Related abbreviations
More math abbreviations
- arcsin – Arcsine (inverse sine)
- arctan – Arctangent (inverse tangent)
- arg – Argument (of a complex number)
- ASA – Angle-Side-Angle (congruence)
- BEDMAS – Brackets, Exponents, Division/Multiplication, Addition/Subtraction
- bn – Billion
- BODMAS – Brackets, Orders, Division/Multiplication, Addition/Subtraction
- C – Complex numbers
See all 91 math abbreviations →