14
submitted 1 year ago by Doctor8@infosec.pub to c/english@lemmy.ca

You know when something can be either "or" or "and?" You may also say it is "and" and or "or"; "or" and/or "and," if you will. That's the inclusive or!

The Latin "vel" is a word for the inclusive or. I also just learned that the logic symbol, ∨, is called "vel" and is used for something called "disjunction" as opposed to "exclusive disjunction (⊻)," which is simply the exclusive or, which is the regular or in English.

Apparently the legal term "vel non" uses this word to mean "or not," which means there's at least a chance of it making it out of the courtroom and into the common lingo like quid pro quo, de jure, and de facto, did.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] hddsx@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 year ago

I understand that xor is the exclusive or. That means that or is indeed the inclusive or.

We already have the inclusive or, people just don’t use it properly. The beauty of language is that we can append inclusive or exclusive to make it clear.

this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
14 points (85.0% liked)

English usage and grammar

363 readers
1 users here now

A community to discuss and ask questions about English usage and grammar.

If your post refers to a specific English variant, please indicate it within square brackets (for instance [Canadian]).

Online resources:

Sibling communities:

Rules of conduct:

The usual ones on Lemmy and Mastodon.. In short: be kind or at least respectful, no offensive language, no harassment, no spam.

(Icon: entry "English" in the Oxford English Dictionary, 1933. Banner: page from Chaucer's "The Wife of Bath's Tale".)

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS