complements

Noun

complement (countable and uncountable, plural complements)

1. The totality, the full amount or number which completes something.
   • Queequeg sought a passage to Christian lands. But the ship, having her full complement of seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father's influence could prevail.1851 November 14, Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC
2. The whole working force of a vessel.
3. An angle which, together with a given angle, makes a right angle.
4. Something which completes, something which combines with something else to make up a complete whole; loosely, something perceived to be a harmonious or desirable partner or addition.
   • History is the complement of poetry.1854, James Stephen, On Desultory and Systematic Reading
5. A word or group of words that completes a grammatical construction in the predicate and that describes or is identified with the subject or object.
   • Why has our grammar broken down at this point? It is not difficult to see why. For, we have failed to make any provision for the fact that only some Verbs in English (i.e. Verbs like those italicized in (5) (a), traditionally called Transitive Verbs) subcategorize ( = ‘takeʼ) an immediately...1988, Andrew Radford, chapter 7, in Transformational grammar: a first course, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, page 340
6. A phonetic complement is a graphic element that modifies another, such as (in Linear B script) a small syllabogram that is attached to a logogram as an abbreviation of its reading (as opposed to an adjunct that abbreviates an adjective that modifies that logogram).

See all 26 meanings of complement