Shouldn't it be a "tit" if you want to be consistent? In fact, please let's make that happen. The HR execs are gonna go crazy when they hear the devs talking about tits all day.
- BInary digiT [BIT]
- BInary digIT [BIT[ (i.e. "merge on the shared vowel")
- Binary digIT [BIT]
That's consistent with the common usage of trit if you take it as a "trinary digit":
- TRInary digiT [TRIT]
- TRInary digIT [TRIT]
- TRinary digIT [TRIT]
But if you're one to stick to ternary digit then you can end up with all sorts of unique combos:
- TErnary digiT [TET]
- TErnary digIT [TEIT] (no shared vowel to merge on)
- Ternary digIT [TIT] (the above humor)
Personally, the middle options for the first 2 sections (BIT and TRIT via shared vowel) are what I always mentally jumped to. If I was going to stick with "ternary" terminology I think, from a pure mapping of mental mechanics, I'd have ended up on TET (i.e. when there is no shared vowel assume the vowel was from the first word instead of the 2nd). The problem with that being TET conflicts with base 4, leaving you with either the awkward double vowel or the awkward end vowel pull. Or just calling it a trinary digit where you get the same consistency results as from BIT.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk (the things a hacker thinks about while burning their PTO I suppose?)
Of course, just for GIF alone I wouldn't mind your method was the universally obvious way... but now I might as well talk about religion and politics too!
If I had been trying to come up with something, I probably would have started with an approach of picking something that was as similar-sounding to "bit" as possible so it would be recognizable and then looking for a justification I could use to argue why it was consistent rather than trying to figure out what the origin of "bit" is and then utilizing the same formula. Interestingly, this would have ended up at basically the same place as you, since I would have first thought of "tit", rejected it due to it not seeming likely to get adopted due to the connotations, and then picked "trit" as the next closest thing.
A 'ter'nary dig'it' would be a 'terit', which elides to 'trit'. That sounds like a natural construction, probably why it came about in the first place. You can't drop the 'r' willy nilly because the proto-Indo-European root etymon is 'tr-' not 't-', same in most descendant languages, and 'ter-' is one unexplained corruption of 'tr-' somewhere in the Latin line.
Personally, I'm fascinated by boobies (especially Sula nebouxii).
also, bits have the dual nature of being boolean logic values, and integers (in fact, arithmetic is done by logic). Bits deserve the honor of their name, and pretenders to the throne are hoping for stolen valor.