EITHER-OR | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary

Meaning of either-or in English

(Definition of either-or from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of either-or

either-or
There is no radical disjunction, no mutually exclusive ' either-or', between them.
Admirably, the slender volume does not provide easy answers, nor does it present ethical questions in an either-or dichotomy.
Our results are not 'either-or' statements and are thus the first results in the literature guaranteeing the existence of rainbow arithmetic progressions.
These represent either-or thinking and false or unnecessary oppositions that we ourselves have criticized.
Maybe, maybe not, or maybe this is not an either-or issue.
Moreover, she pointed out that linguists may be wrong in assuming that they are dealing with an either-or when they talk about reception and production.
Often pulling in opposing directions, the day-by-day resolution of these tensions generates differing degrees of change in a variety of ways, rather than generating strictly dichotomous either-or outcomes.
While the grammar extensively discusses the problematic borderlines between categories, in the end an either-or choice is made, and elements are assigned to one class or another.
That is to say, knowing a word is quite often not an either-or situation; some words are known well, some not at all, and some are known to varying degrees.
So it is not a case of either-or, because you cannot have one without the other.
There seems to be an either-or attitude in the matter.
From the
Hansard archive
Example from the Hansard archive. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0
It is important that there should be an either-or choice.
From the
Hansard archive
Example from the Hansard archive. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0
As he said, it is not an either-or situation.
From the
Hansard archive
Example from the Hansard archive. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0
I do not think that this is an either-or situation.
From the
Hansard archive
Example from the Hansard archive. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0
I do not accept that it is an "either-or" situation.
From the
Hansard archive
Example from the Hansard archive. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.
 

Translations of either-or

in Chinese (Traditional)
必須(或只能)兩者擇一的, 非此即彼的…
in Chinese (Simplified)
必须(或只能)两者择一的, 非此即彼的…
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