binary opposition

noun

Linguistics.

1. a relation between the members of a pair of linguistic items, as a pair of distinctive features, such that one is the absence of the other, as voicelessness and voice, or that one is at the opposite pole from the other, as stridency and mellowness.

Word History and Origins

Origin of binary opposition¹

First recorded in 1950–55

Example Sentences

At least since the U.S.-EU split over the 2003 invasion of Iraq — in retrospect, the most obvious early symptoms of the impending transatlantic divorce — “antagonism toward Europe has been shaped by a highly sexualized binary opposition of American masculine potency to European feminine feebleness.”

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Although the discourse on X has devolved into combative binary opposition and fact-free cheerleading for one’s team, Wikipedia is emerging as a superior place to learn about the conflict.

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It would be churlish to dwell on the fact that its core ingredients are inescapably cliché, with characters representing little more than a series of stock traits in binary opposition: pragmatist/dreamer, right wing/left-wing, etc.

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We hope for new forms of liberation that don't rely on the binary opposition of heterosexual versus LGBTQAI+.

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China may never have subscribed to the “binary opposition between state and society” seen in the West, as the historian Philip C. C. Huang writes in “ ‘Public Sphere’ / ‘Civil Society’ in China?”

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