Word.ws English Dictionary

prime implicant

prime implicant noun: a group of related 1's (implicant) on a Karnaugh map which is not subsumed by any other implicant in the same map. Equivalently (in terms of Boolean algebra), a product term which is a "minimal" implicant in the sense that removing any of its literals will yield a product term which is not an implicant (but beware: on a Karnaugh map it would appear "maximal").

Noun

prime implicant (plural prime implicants)

  1. A group of related 1's (implicant) on a Karnaugh map which is not subsumed by any other implicant in the same map. Equivalently (in terms of Boolean algebra), a product term which is a "minimal" implicant in the sense that removing any of its literals will yield a product term which is not an implicant (but beware: on a Karnaugh map it would appear "maximal").
  2. A group of related 0's (implicant) on a Karnaugh map which is not subsumed by any other implicant (of 0's) in the same map.

Forms of prime implicant

pluralprime implicants

Origin of prime implicant

An implicant (Boolean product term) which is called "prime" because none of its proper factors is itself an implicant.

Words formed from prime implicant

Questions about prime implicant

What does prime implicant mean?
Prime implicant means a group of related 1's (implicant) on a Karnaugh map which is not subsumed by any other implicant in the same map. Equivalently (in terms of Boolean algebra), a product term which is a "minimal" implicant in the sense that removing any of its literals will yield a product term which is not an implicant (but beware: on a Karnaugh map it would appear "maximal").
What part of speech is prime implicant?
Prime implicant is a noun.
What is the plural of prime implicant?
The plural of prime implicant is prime implicants.

Words near prime implicant in the dictionary

  1. prime formulas
  2. prime gap
  3. prime gaps
  4. prime ideal
  5. prime ideals
  6. prime implicant
  7. prime implicants
  8. prime lens
  9. prime meridian
  10. prime meridians
  11. prime minister

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: prime implicant (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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