binary

Etymology

From Late Latin bīnārius (“consisting of two”), from Latin bīnī (“two-by-two, pair”); surface analysis, bin- + -ary.

adj

1. Being in one of two mutually exclusive states.
   Binary states are often represented as 1 and 0 in computer science.
   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. 2013-05-11, “The climate of Tibet: Pole-land”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8835, page 80
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.
   binary star
   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 two operands, arguments, parameters, or inputs; having domain of dimension 2.
   Division of reals is a binary operation.
6. (computing) Of data, consisting coded values (e.g. machine code) not interpretable as plain or ASCII text (e.g. source code).
   He downloaded the binary distribution for Linux, then burned it to DVD.
7. (comparable) Focusing on two mutually exclusive conditions.
   He has a very binary understanding of gender.

noun

1. A state in which only two values are possible, in which something must have one value or the other.
   The correlation between warmth and cold is an internal one where the existence of one depends on and is defined by the other. Hence, the yin-yang binary as a correlative binary of light-shade or warmth-cold … 2012, Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee, Confucianism and Women: A Philosophical Interpretation, page 51
   The “in” versus “out” of this sociological model certainly carries to the admittedly simplistic binary of “good” versus “bad” of stereotypes in fictional works and the scholarly approaches to them. 2012, Scott L. Baugh, Latino American Cinema
2. (mathematics, computing, uncountable) The bijective base-2 numeral system, which uses only the digits 0 and 1.
   As our initial exposure to the base 10 number system consisted of learning how to count, it also makes sense that we might begin by learning how to count in binary. 1987, Robert W. McBeth, J. Robert Ferguson, IBM Assembler: An Intuitive Approach, John Wiley, page 5
3. (computing) Synonym of binary file; a file consisting of data other than human-readable text.
   Now that you have a high-level idea of what binaries look like and how they work, you're ready to dive into a real binary format. 2018, Dennis Andriesse, Practical Binary Analysis[…], No Starch Press, page 31
4. (astronomy) Synonym of binary asteroid.
5. (astronomy) Synonym of binary planet.
6. (astronomy) Synonym of binary star.
   As discussed in Section 5.1, the study of the properties of planets in binaries and the search for differences between the characteristics of these objects and those of planets orbiting single stars, is crucial to the understanding of the role of binarity in planet formation and evolution. 2010, Nader Haghighipour, editor, Planets in Binary Star Systems, Springer Science & Business Media, page 109