Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

unary

/ˈjuːnəɹi/

Word Rarity Very rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 1.93 in modern English

Syllables: unary
IPA: /ˈjuːnəɹi/

8

Scrabble Score

5

Letters

1

Syllables

5

Unique Chars

Meaning

adj

Consisting of or involving a single element or component.

adj

Of an operation, function, procedure, or logic gate, taking exactly one operand, argument, parameter, or input; having domain of dimension 1.

noun

The unary, or bijective base-1, numeral system.

Countable; Uncountable

noun

Unary coding, an entropy encoding for natural numbers.

Countable; Uncountable

Example Sentences

"Her work is a renunciation of the old narrative, a throwing away of the cotton reel, an enunciation of the unary signifier, fort, that is meaningless in itself."
"Negation is a unary operation."
"Zadeh’s claim is that if the meaning of an expression (X) can be modeling by a fuzzy membership function variable, then the meaning of an expression such as “very X” is simply a membership function over the same variable determined by applying a unary operator to the membership function for X."
"On the other hand, blank spaces should not be used for unary operators such as unary minus (−), address of (&), indirection (*), member access (.), increment (++), and decrement (−−)."

Etymology

From Latin ūnus (“one”) + -ary, on the pattern of binary, ternary, etc.

Origin

Source language: Latin

Word Breakdown

Root: ūnus

Usage

Inflected Forms

unaries (plural)

Derived Forms

nonunary unarily

Phrases

unary operation unary operator

Frequently Paired Words

binary ternary

Synonyms

unary numeral system

Questions

How do you pronounce unary?: The recorded pronunciation is /ˈjuːnəɹi/.
What does unary mean?: Consisting of or involving a single element or component.
Where does unary come from?: It is traced to Latin.

How to pronounce unary

Open the pronunciation page — Open the Speakur entry for “unary”.
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