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Concomitant vs Complementary - What's the difference?

concomitant | complementary | Synonyms |

As adjectives the difference between concomitant and complementary

is that concomitant is accompanying; conjoined; attending; concurrent while complementary is acting as a complement.

As nouns the difference between concomitant and complementary

is that concomitant is something happening or existing at the same time while complementary is a complementary colour.

concomitant

English

Adjective

(-)
  • Accompanying; conjoined; attending; concurrent.
  • * (John Locke)
  • It has pleased our wise Creator to annex to several objects, as also to several of our thoughts, a concomitant pleasure.
  • * 1970 , Alvin Toffler, Future Shock'', ''Bantam Books , pg. 41:
  • The new technology on which super-industrialism is based, much of it blue-printed in American research laboratories, brings with it an inevitable acceleration of change in society and a concomitant speed-up of the pace of individual life as well.

    Synonyms

    * (following as a consequence) accompanying, adjoining, attendant, incidental

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • Something happening or existing at the same time.
  • * 1970 , , Bantam Books , pg.93:
  • The declining commitment to place is thus related not to mobility per se, but to a concomitant of mobility- the shorter duration of place relationships.
  • * 1900 , Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams'', ''Avon Books , (translated by James Strachey) pg. 301:
  • It is also instructive to consider the relation of these dreams to anxiety dreams. In the dreams we have been discussing, a repressed wish has found a means of evading censorship—and the distortion which censorship involves. The invariable concomitant is that painful feelings are experienced in the dream.
  • An invariant homogeneous polynomial in the coefficients of a form, a covariant variable, and a contravariant variable.
  • Synonyms

    * (a concomitant event or situation) accompaniment, co-occurrence

    complementary

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Acting as a complement.
  • *
  • Using the terminology we intro-
    duced earlier, we might then say that black and white squares are in comple-
    mentary
    distribution on a chess-board. By this we mean two things: firstly,
    black squares and white squares occupy different positions on the board: and
    secondly, the black and white squares complement each other in the sense that
    the black squares together with the white squares comprise the total set of 64
    squares found on the board (i.e. there is no square on the board which is not
    either black or white).
  • (genetics) Of the specific pairings of the bases in DNA and RNA.
  • (physics) Pertaining to pairs of properties in quantum mechanics that are inversely related to each other, such as speed and position, or energy and time. (See also Heisenberg uncertainty principle.)
  • Usage notes

    * Complementary and complimentary are frequently confused and misused in place of one another.

    Derived terms

    * complementarily * complementarity * complementary angle * complementary colour * complementary distribution

    Noun

    (complementaries)
  • A complementary colour.
  • (obsolete) One skilled in compliments.
  • (Ben Jonson)