1576 A. Fleming tr. J. Caius Of Eng. Dogges 36 This country was cleerely discharged of rauenyng wolfes, and none at all left, no, not to the least number, or the beginnyng of a number, which is an Vnari.

1923 A. C. D. Rivett Phase Rule i. 25 For systems of one, two, three, four, five (and so on) components, one uses the terms unary, binary, ternary, quaternary, quinary (and so on), respectively.

1980 Mineral. Abstr. XXXI. 311/1 Sixteen possible configurations of phase diagrams have been deduced for unary four-phase multi~systems.

1931 Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 37 487 Let p be the result of an undefined unary operation on a K-element p, and p + q the result of an undefined binary operation on the K-elements p, q.

1940 W. V. Quine Math. Logic i. 13 Conjunction and alternation are binary, in that they combine statements two at a time. But denial..is singulary. [Note] The series of adjectives ‘binary’, ‘ternary’, ‘quaternary’, ‘quinary’,..leaves mathematicians in a quandary when n = 1. It is customary to stammer out some such makeshift as ‘unary’ or ‘uninary’ or ‘unitary’. But the proper word is apparent if we reflect that the series of Latin distributives ‘bini’, ‘terni’, ‘quaterni’, ‘quini’,..begins with ‘singuli’.

1961 Jrnl. Assoc. Computing Machinery 8 579 The five binary arithmetic operators (↑, ×, /, +, −), the two unary arithmetic operators (+, −).

1965 Language 41 270 Robert Stockwell has described rules that indicate the colorless patterns for kernel sentences and unary transformations.

1968 J. J. C. Smart Between Sci. & Philos. ii. 24 ‘Not’ can be thought of as a unary sentence connective.

1973 C. W. Gear Introd. Computer Sci. iii. 104 The unary arithmetic operators take precedence over all of the binary operators and must be performed first.

1976 J. S. Gruber Lexical Struct. Syntax & Semantics ii. i. 266 If the treatment is through a unary transformation that alters structure, the dependency of the transformation on apparently semantic factors becomes a matter of graver theoretical consequences.

1968 P. M. Postal Aspects Phonol. Theory i. 13 Natural languages have structures which are such that the markers on every level can be looked upon as sets (sometimes unary sets) of strings of elements.

1968 Amer. Documentation Jan. 73/1 Items are either unary or multiple, depending upon whether they are composed of a single piece of information (which may itself be composed of any number of characters or words) or of two or more separate pieces of information.