baud /bawd/ n.
[simplified from its technical meaning] n. Bits per second.
Hence kilobaud or Kbaud, thousands of bits per second. The
technical meaning is `level transitions per second'; this
coincides with bps only for two-level modulation with no framing
or stop bits. Most hackers are aware of these nuances but
blithely ignore them.
Historical note: `baud' was originally a unit of telegraph
signalling speed, set at one pulse per second. It was proposed at
the November, 1926 conference of the Comité Consultatif
International Des Communications Télégraphiques as
an improvement on the then standard practice of referring to line
speeds in terms of words per minute, and named for Jean Maurice
Emile Baudot (1845-1903), a French engineer who did a lot of
pioneering work in early teleprinters.