In computing, a nibble (often nybble or even nyble to simulate the spelling of byte) is a four-bit aggregation, or half an octet. As a nibble contains 4 bits, there are sixteen (24) possible values, so a nibble corresponds to a single hexadecimal digit (thus, it is often referred to as a "hex digit" or "hexit").
One early recorded use of the term "nybble" was in 1977 within the consumer-banking technology group at Citibank that created a pre-ISO 8583 standard for transactional messages, between cash machines and Citibank's data centers, in which a nybble was the basic informational unit...