binary code

American

noun

Computers.

a system of representing letters, numbers, or other characters, using binary notation.

binary code British

noun

computing the representation of each one of a set of numbers, letters, etc, as a unique sequence of bits, as in ASCII

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

In other words, speaking and understanding binary code would require much more mental effort from both the speaker and the listener.

From Science Daily • Feb. 20, 2026

A final burst of laser pulses nudges each ion to either fluoresce or not—a flash of binary code that detectors read out as the computation’s solution.

From Science Magazine • May 30, 2024

They're the reason you see an actual picture at the top of this webpage, rather than just an incomprehensible scramble of space data and binary code.

From Salon • Mar. 28, 2024

To read them, the recipient had to download an image, translate it into the 1s and 0s of binary code, and know which altered digits, taken in sequence, would spell out the secret.

From Scientific American • Jun. 15, 2023

“I mean, binary code? Doesn’t that seem kind of obvious? Especially coming from a computer geek like you.”

From "Book Scavenger" by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023