Word.ws English Dictionary

two's complement

two's complement noun: the number obtained by complementing every bit of a given number and adding one. A number and its complement add to 2ⁿ, where n is the word size of the machine.

Noun

two's complement (plural two's complements)

  1. The number obtained by complementing every bit of a given number and adding one. A number and its complement add to 2ⁿ, where n is the word size of the machine.
    • The two's complement of 0xAAAA is 0x5556 on a 16-bit machine, and 0xFFFF5556 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 −1 to -2ⁿ⁻¹, n being the word size of the machine, and the numeric complement of a number is its two's complement.
    • Nearly all modern computers use two's complement for integer arithmetic.

Forms of two's complement

pluraltwo's complements

Questions about two's complement

What does two's complement mean?
Two's complement means the number obtained by complementing every bit of a given number and adding one. A number and its complement add to 2ⁿ, where n is the word size of the machine.
What part of speech is two's complement?
Two's complement is a noun.
What is the plural of two's complement?
The plural of two's complement is two's complements.

Words near two's complement in the dictionary

  1. two wrongs don't make a right
  2. two wrongs make a right
  3. two's company and three is none
  4. two's company, three's a crowd
  5. two's company, three's trumpery
  6. two's complement
  7. two's complements
  8. two, six, heave
  9. two-a-day
  10. two-a-days
  11. two-and-twenty

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: two's 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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