megabyte

From mega- + byte.

• IPA^(key): /ˈmɛɡəˌbaɪt/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

megabyte (plural megabytes)

1. (computing, formal) One million (10⁶, or 1,000,000) bytes or 1,000 kilobytes.
   • 1964, System/360 System Summary, IBM, page 27:

     The IBM 2301 Drum Storage (Figure 20) provides random access storage of approximately 4 million bytes at a data rate of 1.2 megabytes per second.

   • 1973, Reference Manual for IBM 3340/3344 Disk Storage, IBM, page 3:

     This 70-megabyte [69,889,536 bytes] data module contains fixed heads in addition to the normal access heads.

   • 2002 April 30, Matt Hamblen, “Next generation wireless: Will users pay?”, in CNN‎^[1]:

     AT&T Wireless Services Inc. in Redmond, Washington, is currently offering $1 per megabyte as its cheapest rate for General Packet Radio Service wireless service, which can provide 20K to 40K bit/sec. throughput. But that price is only if a subscriber buys the most megabytes per month now being offered: 200MB of data for $199 a month.

   • 2009 May 14, Marguerite Reardon, “Verizon Netbook to hit stores this weekend”, in CNN‎^[2]:

     The overage charge on this plan has been reduced to 10 cents per megabyte over the limit. Previously, the company charged 25 cents per megabyte for overages.

2. (computing, informal) A mebibyte.
   • 2003, Michael Meyers, Managing and Troubleshooting PCs, page 933:

     One megabyte is 1,048,576 bytes. One megahertz, however is a million Hertz.

   • 2004, Kerry Cox, Christopher Gerg, Managing Security with Snort and IDS Tools, page 92:

     Defaults to 2 megabytes (2,097,152 bytes).

   • 2006, Eriq Oliver Neale, Microsoft Small Business Server 2003 Unleashed, page 290:

     By default, each log file [...] is exactly 5 megabytes (5,242,880 bytes) in size.

• MB, ㎆

• Previous: kilobyte
• Next: gigabyte

• mebibit
• mebibyte
• megabit

• megabajt

From mega- +‎ byte.

• IPA^(key): [ˈmɛɡabajt]

megabyte m inan

1. megabyte

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

Unadapted borrowing from English megabyte. By surface analysis, mega- +‎ byte.

megabyte m (invariable)

1. (computing) megabyte

Unadapted borrowing from English megabyte.

megabyte m (plural megabytes)

1. (computing) megabyte (one million bytes)

• Abbreviations: MB, mega

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

• megabit
• mebibyte

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

Unadapted borrowing from English megabyte, equivalent to mega- +‎ byte.

• IPA^(key): /meɡaˈbait/ [me.ɣ̞aˈβ̞ai̯t̪]
• Rhymes: -ait
• Syllabification: me‧ga‧byte

megabyte m (plural megabytes)

1. (computing) megabyte

According to Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) prescriptions, unadapted foreign words should be written in italics in a text printed in roman type, and vice versa, and in quotation marks in a manuscript text or when italics are not available. In practice, this RAE prescription is not always followed.

• “megabyte”, 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