mutually exclusive
One precludes another
Two things are mutually exclusive when choosing or having one rules out the other—they cannot both be true or happen simultaneously.
Sleep and wakefulness are mutually exclusive states.
The phrase appears often in logic, statistics, and everyday reasoning: The options aren't mutually exclusive; you can do both.
- contradictionOpposing claims, incompatible together
- incompatibilityUnable to function together
- oil and waterProverbial unmixable substances
- oppositeReverse or contrary thing
- alternativeAnother available choice
disjunction · irreconcilable · nonoverlapping · double bind · intersection · antithetical · either-or · one or the other · pick one · antipodal · zero-sum game · Venn diagram · dichotomy · all or nothing · XOR · diametrical · disjoint · opportunity cost
- probabilityprobability, chance, random, randomness, odds
- incompatibilityoil and water, chalk and cheese, apples and oranges, mismatch, clash
- contradictionsparadox, oxymoron, contradiction, paradoxes, oxymorons
mutually exclusivecompatible
Able to work together
complementary · coexistent · concurrent · simultaneous · harmonious
mutually exclusiveoverlapping
Covering part of another
coincident · identical · congruent · coextensive · intersecting
mutually exclusivecodependent
Unhealthily reliant on another
interdependent · symbiotic · intertwined · inseparable · interconnected
exclude, mutual, exclusive, exclusion, excluding, exclusively, mutually, mutuality, mutualism