Talk:complement

An anonymous contributor helpfully added the more general definition of "complement" that subsumes the ones and twos complments (a good catch; thanks!). I've broken it down the way it is now because the ones and twos complements sense are the usual ones in computing, while the general sense is more limited in use. I would expect that most of the remaining uses are either "nines complement" or "tens complement". I couldn't find "base n complement", "complement base n" or "n's complement" on google at all.

Mathworld doesn't seem to mention either "ones complement" or "twos complement" specifically. It does mention several other complements (knot complement; graph complement etc.), any of which could be called the complement in context. I'm not sure quite how fine to slice all this. The current entry is my current best guess. -dmh 03:12, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Three synonymous explications?
A) 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

B) Any word or group of words used to complete a grammatical construction, typically in the predicate, including adverbials, infinitives, and sometimes objects

C) complement clause

Could the information in these three be included in one explication? Those seem so synonymous. -- Frous 23:54, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

RFM discussion: May 2023–March 2024
In heraldry, you can bear a sun in (its/his) splendor, suns in glory, peacocks in their pride, pelicans in piety: I created those entries at in (x), because AFAICT that sense of the noun isn't used without in. But I see we have the moon in its/her complement  [moved], increment [moved] or plenitude defined at the bare nouns. For complement, I can't find it used without in, e.g. *the moon's complement, so I'm inclined to move it to in complement. I can't find plenitude or detriment without in in heraldry, but I can find , outside heraldry: should I still move the heraldic sense? (Alternatively we could just create a redirect from in plenitude and in her plenitude etc to the relevant sense of plenitude to make sure people searching for in... forms got to the right place.) - -sche (discuss) 18:31, 15 May 2023 (UTC)


 * I moved complement and increment and left plenitude. - -sche (discuss) 14:14, 29 March 2024 (UTC)