Binary

English

Pronunciation

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Etymology

From Late Latin bīnārius (“consisting of two”), from Latin bīnī (“two-by-two, pair”).

Adjective

Binary (not comparable)

1. Being in a state of one of two mutually exclusive conditions such as on or off, true or false, presence or absence of a signal.

   Binary states are often abstracted as 1 and 0 in computer science.

2. (logic) Concerning logic whose subject matter concerns binary states.
3. (arithmetic, computing) Concerning numbers and calculations using the binary number system.
4. Having two equally important parts; related to something with two parts.

   Two ingredients are combined in a binary poison.

   A binary statistical distribution has only two categories.

5. (mathematics, programming, computer engineering) Of an operation, function, procedure, or logic gate, taking exactly one operand, argument, parameter, or input; having domain of dimension 2.

   Division of reals is a binary operation.

6. (computing) Of data, consisting of arbitrary values; that is, not interpretable as plain or ASCII text.

   He downloaded the binary distribution for Linux, then burned it to DVD.

Synonyms

• (arity, adicity, rank): dyadic
• (logic of binary states): Boolean
• (of calculations with binary numbers): base-2

Antonyms

• (arbitrary data): ASCII, text

Derived terms

binary antonym binary arithmetic binary code binary compound binary digit binary distribution binary fission

binary function binary logarithm binary name binary noun binary number binary numeral system binary operation

binary operator binary quasar binary relation binary star binary star system binary tree gender binary

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Noun

Binary (plural binaries)

1. (mathematics, computing, uncountable) The bijective base-2 numeral system, which uses only the digits 0 and 1.
2. (computing) An executable computer file.
3. (astronomy) A star system consisting of only two stars.

Synonyms

• (base 2 numeral system) base 2
• (system of two stars) binary star, double star

Derived terms

• binary-coded decimal
• visual binary
• X-ray binary

Thesaurus

Janus-like, ambidextrous, bifacial, bifold, biform, bilateral, binate, biparous, bivalent, conduplicate, disomatous, double, double-barreled, double-faced, dual, dualistic, duple, duplex, duplicate, geminate, geminated, second, secondary, twin, twinned, two-faced, two-level, two-ply, two-sided, two-story, twofold

See also

• unary
• ternary