language-agnosticmathlogicbooleanxor

What does Exclusive in XOR really mean?

Maybe this is just obvious to everyone but can someone explain where XOR (or Exclusive-OR) got its name from? What does the word Exclusive really mean?

Not that it matters, but its just stuck in my head since morning.

OR:
0 0  0
0 1  1
1 0  1
1 1  1

XOR:
0 0  0
0 1  1
1 0  1
1 1  0

Is it "exclusively 0 for inputs 1,1", "special version of OR" or something else?

Solution

  • XOR is an "exclusive OR" because it only returns a "true" value of 1 if the two values are exclusive, i.e. they are both different.