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}.(1998-08-09)