complement

Meanings

Noun

• Something (or someone) that completes; the consummation.
• The act of completing something, or the fact of being complete; completion, completeness, fulfilment.
• The totality, the full amount or number which completes something.
• Something which completes one's equipment, dress etc.; an accessory.
• The whole working force of a vessel.
• Fullness (of the moon).
• An angle which, together with a given angle, makes a right angle.
• 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.
• 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.
• An interval which, together with the given interval, makes an octave.
• The color which, when mixed with the given color, gives black (for mixing pigments) or white (for mixing light).
• Given two sets, the set containing one set's elements that are not members of the other set (whether a relative complement or an absolute complement).
• One of several blood proteins that work with antibodies during an immune response.
• An expression related to some other expression such that it is true under the same conditions that make other false, and vice versa.
• A voltage level with the opposite logical sense to the given one.
• A bit with the opposite value to the given one; the logical complement of a number.
• The diminished radix complement of a number; the nines' complement of a decimal number; the ones' complement of a binary number.
• The radix complement of a number; the two's complement of a binary number.
• The numeric complement of a number.
• A nucleotide sequence in which each base is replaced by the complementary base of the given sequence: adenine (A) by thymine (T) or uracil (U), cytosine (C) by guanine (G), and vice versa.
• compliment.
• Synonym of alexin

Verb

• To complete, to bring to perfection, to make whole.
• To provide what the partner lacks and lack what the partner provides, thus forming part of a whole.
• To change a voltage, number, color, etc. to its complement.
• Old form of compliment

Origin

• From Middle English complement, from Latin complementum ("that which fills up or completes"), from compleo (English complete). compliment.