The ordering of bytes in a multi-byte number.

The term comes from Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" via the famous paper "On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace" by Danny Cohen, USC/ISI IEN 137, 1980-04-01.

The Lilliputians, being very small, had correspondingly small political problems. The Big-Endian and Little-Endian parties debated over whether soft-boiled eggs should be opened at the big end or the little end.

See big-endian, little-endian, middle-endian, holy wars, NUXI problem, swab.