etymology - Why is the common meaning of logical terms ('and', 'or') incongruous from that in math?


If someone wrote that they want "nuts and bolts", they would get a bunch of hardware they could attach things with. If this was software or math, they would only receive nothing, because things are (generally) nuts or bolts.


If someone asked for "vanilla or chocolate", they might be given one or the other; "exclusive or" in the math.


Why is there this mix-up of logical operators between normal language and math?




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

verbs - "Baby is creeping" vs. "baby is crawling" in AmE

commas - Does this sentence have too many subjunctives?

time - English notation for hour, minutes and seconds

grammatical number - Use of lone apostrophe for plural?

etymology - Origin of "s--t eating grin"

etymology - Where does the phrase "doctored" originate?

word choice - Which is the correct spelling: “fairy” or “faerie”?