unary
/ˈjuːnəɹi/adjective, noun
unary is spelled U-N-A-R-Y: 5 letters. It appears about once in every 12 million words in written English, the 102,771st most frequent word form (wordfreq, 2021 data). As an adjective, unary means “Consisting of or involving a single element or component” (English Wiktionary, September 2026).
How many letters and syllables are in unary?
| Letters | 5: U-N-A-R-Y |
|---|---|
| In writing | about once in every 12 million words; the 102,771st most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | none measured in search |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How common is unary?
Unary appears about once in every 12 million words in written English, the 102,771st most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce unary?
- /ˈjuːnəɹi/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: LL-Q1860_(eng)-Flame,_not_lame-unary.wav, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of unary
- unaries plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does unary mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
adjective
- 1
Consisting of or involving a single element or component.
- 2
Of an operation, function, procedure, or logic gate, taking exactly one operand, argument, parameter, or input; having domain of dimension 1.
Negation is a unary operation.
noun
- 1
The unary, or bijective base-1, numeral system.
- 2
Unary coding, an entropy encoding for natural numbers.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Unary in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| German | einstellig , unär , Unärsystem |
| Portuguese | unário |
| French | unaire |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does unary come from?
From Latin ūnus (“one”) + -ary, on the pattern of binary, ternary, etc.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).