I. |kämplə|mentərē, -n.trē, -ri adjective
Etymology: French complémentaire, from complément complement (from Latin complementum ) + -aire -ary
1. : of, relating to, or suggestive of complementing, completing, or perfecting
their economies are more complementary than competitive — William Petersen
participation … as complementary to observation — Lewis Mumford
2. : mutually dependent : supplementing and being supplemented in return
farmer and townsman represent complementary interests — Farmer's Weekly (South Africa)
3. : being one of a pair of chromatic stimuli that produce an achromatic mixture when combined in suitable proportions
a complementary color
4. : serving as a grammatical complement
a complementary infinitive
5. : of or relating to sets of small bodies of igneous rock varying in composition that accompany large masses from which they were derived by differentiation
aplites and other complementary dikes
6. : related in relatively fixed proportions
some pairs of commodities are complementary so that the consumer uses more of one the more he uses of the other — G.J.Stigler
7. : of or relating to the negate of a given class or statement
the complementary property to blue … is not blue — A.J.Ayer
or to two classes or statements each of which is the negation of the other
II. noun
( -es )
: something that stands in a complementary relationship ; especially : a complementary color
III. adjective
: characterized by molecular complementarity ; especially : characterized by the capacity for precise pairing of purine and pyrimidine bases between strands of DNA and sometimes RNA such that the structure of one strand determines the other