Word.ws English Dictionary

ones' complement

ones' complement noun: the number obtained by subtracting a given n-digit binary number from 2ⁿ-1 (which yields the same result as the logical complement).

Noun

ones' complement (plural ones' complements)

  1. The number obtained by subtracting a given n-digit binary number from 2ⁿ-1 (which yields the same result as the logical complement).
    • The ones' complement of 0xAAAA is 0x5555 on a 16-bit machine, and 0xFFFF5555 on a 32-bit machine.
  2. The convention by which bit patterns with high bit 0 represent positive numbers from 0 to 2ⁿ⁻¹-1 directly, while bit patterns with high bit 1 represent negative numbers from 0 to -(2ⁿ⁻¹-1), n being the word size of the machine, and the numeric complement of a number is its ones' complement.
    • Computers that use ones' complement arithmetic have two representations for zero, all 0's and all 1's.

Synonyms of ones' complement

Forms of ones' complement

pluralones' complements

Questions about ones' complement

What does ones' complement mean?
Ones' complement means the number obtained by subtracting a given n-digit binary number from 2ⁿ-1 (which yields the same result as the logical complement).
What part of speech is ones' complement?
Ones' complement is a noun.
What is the plural of ones' complement?
The plural of ones' complement is ones' complements.

Words near ones' complement in the dictionary

  1. ones and twos
  2. ones and zeroes
  3. ones and zeros
  4. ones that go the other way
  5. ones to talk
  6. ones' complement
  7. ones' complements
  8. onescore
  9. oneseed juniper
  10. oneseed junipers
  11. oneself

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ones' complement (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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