From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishmutually exclusivemutually exclusiveONLYif two things are mutually exclusive, you cannot have or do both of them Lesbianism and motherhood are not mutually exclusive. → exclusive
Examples from the Corpus
mutually exclusive• Both questions have to receive affirmative answers, and they are not mutually exclusive.• But educators there have shown that high academic standards and the concepts under-girding school-to-work are not mutually exclusive.• However, he did not seem to comprehend the possibility that self organisation and compulsion are mutually exclusive.• Of course, the three subcategories overlap, somewhat, and so are not mutually exclusive.• The transcripts start with either coding segment 1 or segment 2; coding segments 1 and 5 are mutually exclusive.• These proposals were not mutually exclusive, and most officials wanted a combination of the three, with an emphasis on one.• To a large extent these two approaches have been mutually exclusive, not to say antagonistic.• This is the case of choosing from among mutually exclusive projects with widely differing costs.mutually exclusivemutually exclusiveOPPOSITE/REVERSEtwo ideas or beliefs that are mutually exclusive cannot both exist or be true at the same time → mutuallyExamples from the Corpus
mutually exclusive• Both questions have to receive affirmative answers, and they are not mutually exclusive.• But educators there have shown that high academic standards and the concepts under-girding school-to-work are not mutually exclusive.• However, he did not seem to comprehend the possibility that self organisation and compulsion are mutually exclusive.• Of course, the three subcategories overlap, somewhat, and so are not mutually exclusive.• The transcripts start with either coding segment 1 or segment 2; coding segments 1 and 5 are mutually exclusive.• These proposals were not mutually exclusive, and most officials wanted a combination of the three, with an emphasis on one.• To a large extent these two approaches have been mutually exclusive, not to say antagonistic.• This is the case of choosing from among mutually exclusive projects with widely differing costs. 