binary opposition

American  

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.

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Etymology

Origin of binary opposition

First recorded in 1950–55

Example Sentences

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.

From New York Times

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

From Salon

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?”

From New York Times

Could their lives have been any more different, their destinies any more predetermined by the binary opposition of their initial, if accidental circumstances?

From Salon

Because our revolution created a corrupt economic and political system that thrives on the binary opposition of “us” or “them.”

From Washington Post