Binary

Pronunciation

Origin

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

Full definition of binary

Adjective

1. Being in a state of one of two mutually exclusive conditions such as on or off, true or false, molten or frozen, presence or absence of a signal.
• 2013-05-11, The climate of Tibet: Pole-land, Of all the transitions brought about on the Earth’s surface by temperature change, the melting of ice into water is the starkest. It is binary. And for the land beneath, the air above and the life around, it changes everything.
2. Binary states are often represented as 1 and 0 in computer science.
3. (logic) Concerning logic whose subject matter concerns binary states.
4. (arithmetic, computing) Concerning numbers and calculations using the binary number system.
5. 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.
6. (mathematics, programming, computer engineering) Of an operation, function, procedure, or logic gate, taking exactly two operands, arguments, parameters, or inputs; having domain of dimension 2.Division of reals is a binary operation.
7. (computing) Of data, consisting coded values 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

Noun

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

Anagrams

• brainy