GB

See also: Appendix:Variations of "gb"

㎇ U+3387, ㎇ SQUARE GB ← ㎆ [U+3386] CJK Compatibility ㎈ → [U+3388]

Translingual

Etymology

From English Great Britain, taken from the full name of the country, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The reasoning provided by the International Organization for Standardization is, “Since name components like Republic, Kingdom, United, Federal or Democratic are used very often in country names we usually do not derive the country code elements from them in order to avoid ambiguity. The name components United and Kingdom not being appro[p]riate for ISO 3166-1, the code GB for the United Kingdom was created from Great Britain.”

Symbol

GB

1. (international standards) ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code for the United Kingdom.

   Synonyms: GBR (alpha-3), UK (exceptionally reserved)

2. Until 2021: (license plate codes) Great Britain, superseded by UK.

   Coordinate terms: GBG (“Guernsey”), GBJ (“Jersey”), GBM (“Isle of Man”), GBZ (“Gibraltar”)

Usage notes

• The code includes the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia.

Anagrams

• BG

English

Noun

GB (plural GBs)

1. Initialism of gigabyte.
   • 1989, IBM 3390 Direct Access Storage Reference Summary‎^[2], IBM, archived from the original on 16 March 2024, page 7:

     MB equals 10⁶ bytes and GB equals 10⁹ bytes

   • 2020 May 19, Jacob Krol, “Samsung’s T7 SSD is a fast external drive at a cheaper price”, in CNN‎^[3], Atlanta, Ga.: Warner Bros. Discovery, archived from the original on 30 December 2025:

     We’ve found the T7 Touch SSD to be fast, secure and quite portable. But the inclusion of a fingerprint sensor for security onboard increased the price: $129.99 for 500GBs, $229.99 for 1TB and $399.99 for 2TB.

   • 2023, Gareth Eagar, Data Engineering with AWS, page 517:

     […] an Amazon S3 bucket can be used to store hundreds of GBs of data to start with […]

   • 2024 September 4, Anurag Singh, “Discord lowers free upload limit to 10MB: “Storage management is expensive””, in Dexerto‎^[4], archived from the original on 8 March 2025:

     For those who aren’t aware, a Nitro Basic subscription costs $3 a month. Nitro users, who pay $10 a month, get to stream videos in 4K and use emojis in channels. In comparison, messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram offer a 2 GB file limit.

2. (computing, informal) Abbreviation of gibibyte.

   Synonym: GiB.

3. (anatomy) Initialism of gallbladder.
4. (informal, pharmacology) Initialism of goofball (“a barbiturate”).
   • 1965 February 26, James Mills, “The World of Needle Park”, in Time, volume 58, number 8, New York, N.Y.: Time Inc., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 82:

     Goofballs usually produce a quiet drowsiness, but also at times a tense aggressiveness that can be frighteningly unpredictable. Irene's behavior when she is high on GBs, which is most of the time, has created such havoc in the neighborhood restaurants that they no longer let her in.

5. (crystallography) Initialism of grain boundary.
6. (astronomy) Initialism of green bean galaxy.

Translations

gigabyte

• French: Go (fr)
• Georgian: გბაიტი (gbaiṭi), გბ (gb)
• Tigrinya: ጊባ (giba)

Proper noun

GB

1. Initialism of Great Britain.
2. Initialism of Gilgit-Baltistan.
3. Abbreviation of Green Bay in Wisconsin, USA.
4. Initialism of Game Boy.
5. (chemistry, military) Initialism of German agent B (US designation for the nerve gas sarin).
6. Initialism of Guantanamo Bay.
7. (linguistics) Initialism of Government and Binding.

See also

• Great Britain on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Green Bay, Wisconsin on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Phrase

GB

1. (Internet slang) Initialism of God bless.

See also

• GB galaxy

Anagrams

• Bg., bg, BG

Indonesian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈɡe.be/, [ˈɡe.be]

Noun

GB (plural GB-GB)

1. (education) initialism of guru besar
2. initialism of gigabita

Further reading

• “GB”, in Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia [Great Dictionary of the Indonesian Language] (in Indonesian), Jakarta: Agency for Language Development and Cultivation – Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology of the Republic of Indonesia, 2016

Spanish

Proper noun

GB f

1. initialism of Geroa Bai

Symbol

GB

1. (computing) abbreviation of gigabyte
   • 2021 July 21, Juan Garzon, “Los mejores celulares Android de 2021”, in CNN en Español‎^[5], archived from the original on 31 December 2025:

     Este celular tiene una hermosa pantalla, un cuerpo que es resistente al agua (IP68), su procesador Snapdragon 888 (o Exynos 2100), con 12 GB o 16 GB de RAM, ofrece una experiencia muy fluida y es el primer celular de la serie Galaxy S que es compatible con un S Pen, el stylus de Samsung.

     (please add an English translation of this quotation)

Swahili

Symbol

GB

1. (computing) abbreviation of gigabaiti (“gigabyte”)

Yoruba

Letter

GB (all caps, upper case Gb, lower case gb)

1. alternative letter-case form of Gb (“The eighth letter of the Yoruba alphabet”)

See also

• (Latin-script letters) lẹ́tà; A a (Á á, À à, Ā ā), B b, D d, E e (É é, È è, Ē ē), Ẹ ẹ (Ẹ́ ẹ́, Ẹ̀ ẹ̀, Ẹ̄ ẹ̄), F f, G g, Gb gb, H h, I i (Í í, Ì ì, Ī ī), J j, K k, L l, M m (Ḿ ḿ, M̀ m̀, M̄ m̄), N n (Ń ń, Ǹ ǹ, N̄ n̄), O o (Ó ó, Ò ò, Ō ō), Ọ ọ (Ọ́ ọ́, Ọ̀ ọ̀, Ọ̄ ọ̄), P p, R r, S s, Ṣ ṣ, T t, U u (Ú ú, Ù ù, Ū ū), W w, Y y
• (Benin)
• (Latin-script letters) lɛ́tà; A a, B b, D d, E e, Ɛ ɛ, F f, G g, Gb gb, H h, I i, J j, K k, Kp kp, L l, M m, N n, O o, Ɔ ɔ, P p, R r, S s, Sh sh, T t, U u, W w, Y y