Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

two's complement

Word Rarity Rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.68 in modern English

Syllables: two's -com-ple-ment
IPA

25

Scrabble Score

14

Letters

4

Syllables

10

Unique Chars

Meaning

noun

The number obtained by complementing every bit of a given number and adding one. A number and its complement add to 2ⁿ, where n is the word size of the machine.

noun

The convention by which bit patterns with high bit 0 represent positive numbers from 0 to 2ⁿ⁻¹-1 directly, while bit patterns with high bit 1 represent negative numbers from −1 to -2ⁿ⁻¹, n being the word size of the machine, and the numeric complement of a number is its two's complement.

Example Sentences

"The two's complement of 0xAAAA is 0x5556 on a 16-bit machine, and 0xFFFF5556 on a 32-bit machine."
"Nearly all modern computers use two's complement for integer arithmetic."

Inflected Forms

two's complements (plural)

Phrases

radix complement numeric complement ones' complement signed magnitude

Frequently Paired Words

complement radix complement numeric complement ones' complement signed magnitude

Questions

What does two's complement mean?: The number obtained by complementing every bit of a given number and adding one. A number and its complement add to 2ⁿ, where n is the word size of the machine.

How to pronounce two's complement

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