I’m sorry if this seems dumb. I tend to take things literally and “mutual” and “exclusive” seem to be antonyms but mutually exclusive is a term used a lot and it confuses the crap out of me. I’m a native English speaker also.
Does it mean that the two things CAN exist together? I feel like my brain does gymnastics trying to understand the term; I’m not a dumb person but this term just totally eludes me!
Please don’t attack me, just trying to not feel stupid.
In: 49
Mutually exclusive means that a excludes b, and b excludes a. They exclude each other mutually.
If I say you can have a pizza and the toppings can be pepperoni and sausage, sausage and peppers, pepperoni and ham, and ham and peppers, then that means that sausage and ham are mutually exclusive. You can can sausage on the pizza with another topping, but that excludes ham. You can also have ham with another topping, but the ham excludes the sausage.
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