Fournibble

Fournibble is a unit of digital information that appears in historical, hobbyist, and theoretical discussions about data organization. By definition, one four-nibble unit equals four nibbles, which is 16 bits. Since a nibble is 4 bits, a fournibble is twice the size of a byte and corresponds to 2 bytes. The term is not part of official standards and is rarely used in modern engineering documentation.

Etymology andTerminology

The name Fournibble is a portmanteau of “four” and “nibble.” In this usage, a nibble represents 4 bits, so a four-nibble unit consolidates data into 16-bit blocks. Abbreviations for fournibble are informal and not standardized; many sources simply describe it as “16 bits” or “two bytes.”

History and Usage

Fournibbles have mostly appeared in retrocomputing forums, pedagogical examples, and speculative discussions about alternative data-unit nomenclature. They are sometimes employed to illustrate bit grouping and memory alignment beyond a single nibble or a single byte, particularly when discussing 16-bit architectures or memory structures designed around 16-bit boundaries. In contemporary technical writing, the unit is generally avoided in favor of bits, nibbles, and bytes, with 16-bit data items described directly as two bytes.

Relation to other units

- 1 nibble = 4 bits

- 1 fournibble = 4 nibbles = 16 bits = 2 bytes

- 1 byte = 8 bits

See also

Nibble, Byte, Bit, Data size units.