the amount of information being sent or received during a particular interaction, with an emphasis on the speed of transfer more than the absolute quantity; derives from telecommunications and computing, where the word indicates the number of digital bits a system can process in a given time; as jargon it can be used to subtly deprecate while sounding coolly technical, as in “It was a pretty low-bitrate conference, most of the keynotes were trying to imitate TED talks without a lot of new ideas”; by contrast a “high-bitrate” meeting provides significant valuable content in the allotted time, such designation being high praise and probably given by an engineer-type