binary

UK/ˈbaɪ.nə.ɹɪ/US/ˈbaɪ.nə.ɹi/

adjectiveB2+Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,233 of 15,258leans written

Binary means made of two parts, or written using only ones and zeros. Binary code, a binary choice, binary star.

Computers use it because a switch is either on or off, and every number, letter and picture in a machine is stored that way. A binary choice is one with only two options, and the word is now often used to complain that a question was put too narrowly.

Definitions of binary

1adjectivebinaryMade of two parts, or written using only ones and zeros.B2+
“The computer stores each letter you type as a binary number.”

binary is a quality.

Where it comes from

Latin
bīnārius — consisting of two
Middle English
binarie
English, today
binary

From Middle English binarie, from Latin bīnārius (“consisting of two”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

binary in the wild

The symbol for the binary digit is either "bit", per the IEC 80000-13:2008 standard, or the lowercase character "b", per the IEEE 1541-2002 standard.
Bit
In mathematics, a binary operation or dyadic operation is a kind of binary function, i.e. given a pair of input values (called operands), it produces an output value.
Binary operation
A binary operation is an operation of arity two.
Binary operation
The most commonly used binary prefixes are kibi, mebi, and gibi.
Binary prefix
The binary prefixes "kibi", "mebi", etc. were defined in 1999 by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), in the IEC 60027-2 standard (Amendment 2).
Binary prefix

1 / 4

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

← Vocabulary