Big-endian

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Storing the most significant byte of a multibyte number at a lower address than the least significant byte; that is, "big end" first. not-comparable

    "Most big Unix machines are big-endian, but Intel x86 machines and older Digital machines are little-endian."

  2. 2
    Transmitting the most significant byte of a multibyte number before transmitting the least significant byte; that is, "big end" first. not-comparable

    "The network octet order for all protocols in the TCP/IP protocol suite is big-endian. A big-endian computer system need not perform any conversion in building TCP/IP protocol headers from integers stored in its memory."

Synonyms

All synonyms
network byte-order

Example

More examples

"Most big Unix machines are big-endian, but Intel x86 machines and older Digital machines are little-endian."

Etymology

See the etymology for endian.

More for "big-endian"

SynonymsSentencesPronunciationTranslate

Next best steps

Find stronger synonymsSee usage examplesCheck pronunciationBrowse writing guides

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.