Unary means "consisting of one element"; is there a word meaning "consisting of more than one element"?
Poly-ary sounds wrong, as does mult-ary...
What is the opposite (in this sense) of unary?
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2Simply "non-unary"? ai.stanford.edu/~koller/Papers/Grove+al:96a.pdf– Yee-LumAug 12, 2016 at 23:04
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1@Yee-Lum: But non-unary allows for nullary (niladic) also. The OP apparently wants n-ary where n > 1.– DrewAug 12, 2016 at 23:09
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That's true. The title and body seem to be asking slightly different questions, in that case.– Yee-LumAug 12, 2016 at 23:13
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@Yee-lum I don't think opposite has such a concrete definition, so I clarified exactly which opposite I meant in the body.– MichaelChiricoAug 13, 2016 at 1:28
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"Plurality" technically fits, but has acquired conflicting meanings over the ages.– Hot LicksNov 12, 2017 at 22:38
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2 Answers
The word plurarity does not appear in the dictionary, but if you google it there are quite a few cases of it being used this way.
While plur- is a valid Latin prefix, English words using it usually start with plural-, pluralism for instance.
So I suppose it could be seen as a portmanteau of plural and arity.
In that same sense, a word for n-arity > 1, could be plurary.
answered Nov 12, 2017 at 21:33
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This is a noun, not an adjective, though for that matter, I'm pretty sure simple plural fits the bill. Nov 13, 2017 at 1:51
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@MichaelChirico The word I'm recommending is plurary. See the last sentence. Nov 13, 2017 at 1:53
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@SamWashburn I missed that detail. It's a horrible word, but plurality is in the dictionary.– Simon BNov 13, 2017 at 9:50
You can use multiple-arity if different numbers of arguments are accepted (e.g. a polymorphic function/method), or n-ary if you want to be indefinite about the arity. But I don't know of a term for arity > 1.
