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exclusive-or

Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.

Letters

12 characters

Language

English

word origin

Source

Wiktionary

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Detailed reference entry for the English word "exclusive-or", 12-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Wiktionary, and usage frequency ranked against an open word-frequency list covering the top 100,000 English words. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "exclusive-or" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "exclusive-or" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.

exclusive or is aEnglishnoun. It means: Exclusive disjunction: the use of or to indicate that of two predicates, one is true and one is false (without specifying which is which); contrasted with inclusive or, which does not imply that on...

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Key facts for exclusive or
PropertyValue
Headwordexclusive or
LanguageEnglish
Part of speechNoun
Letters12
Misspellings tracked0
Confusable pairs0
SourceWiktionary (kaikki.org)

Frequency rank visualization

exclusive or is not present in the top-100,000 ranked English corpus, typical for technical, archaic, or low-frequency vocabulary.

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list

Spelling & Dictionary Insight

The English entry for exclusive or is 12 letters long, classified as anoun. It sits outside the most-frequent rank tiers, which is often why uncommon words generate more spelling variants per reader.Wiktionary records 3 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.

No misspelling variants are generated for exclusive or in our index, suggesting the orthography follows predictable English patterns.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.

Etymologically, the entry records: exclusive + or. Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is exclusive or, spelled E-X-C-L-U-S-I-V-E- -O-R, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.

Definition

  1. 1
    Exclusive disjunction: the use of or to indicate that of two predicates, one is true and one is false (without specifying which is which); contrasted with inclusive or, which does not imply that one must be false.
  2. 2
    Exclusive disjunction: the use of or to indicate that of two or more predicates, an odd number are true (without specifying which or how many); contrasted with inclusive or, which indicates only that one or more is true.
  3. 3
    An exclusive disjunction; the result of applying the above-described exclusive or to two or more predicates; contrasted with an inclusive or, which is the result of applying an inclusive or.

Etymology

exclusive + or.

This word in other languages

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you spell "exclusive or"?
"exclusive or" is spelled E-X-C-L-U-S-I-V-E- -O-R.
What does "exclusive or" mean?
As a noun, "exclusive or" means: Exclusive disjunction: the use of or to indicate that of two predicates, one is true and one is false (without specifying which is which); contrasted with inclusive or, which does not imply that on...
What is the origin of the word "exclusive or"?
exclusive + or. See the full etymology section above for more details.
Is PlainSpell free to use?
Yes, PlainSpell is a completely free word reference. You can look up definitions, pronunciations, confusable pairs, homophones, and spelling corrections across 5 languages without any sign-up or subscription.

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Data Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org), licensed under CC BY-SA & GFDL. Word ordering uses an open word-frequency list; misspelling variants are generated by edit-distance from the correct headword.