Well, it’s a relief to me to see how this poll is going. Some of you may be surprised to hear that the confusion I alluded to in my OP was not over whether “or” was meant in the exclusive (“Coffee or tea?”) or inclusive (“Cream or sugar?”) sense. Instead these people reacted to my use of the word “or” as though it were the same thing as “and”. They took a statement with the same structure as “All apples are red, yellow, or green” (we weren’t really talking about apples) to mean “Every apple has a 3-colored skin.”
I really did not expect that anyone would interpret my statement in that way. It seems very obvious to me that in normal conversational English one would not say something like “All the tigers in this photo are orange, black, or white.” If I intended for it to be understood that all three colors were present in the coats of all the tigers, I’d say “All the tigers in this photo are orange, black, AND white.” But since more than one person did misinterpret my “or” as meaning “and”, I was starting to wonder if it this was a common interpretation and if it was my fault for being unclear.
I see that one person here did choose Answer 1 in the poll, and if they don’t mind I’d be interested in hearing why. I’m also curious if there’s any other way to phrase a statement like “All apples are red, yellow, or green” to make it more clear than the intended meaning is NOT “Every apple has a 3-colored skin.”
FWIW, I consider Answers 2, 3, and 4 to all be reasonable. In everyday speech I think Answer 2 is the most likely intended meaning, but Answer 3 is also possible. I’d say Answer 4 is the best of the four answers for that reason, but Answer 2 is probably (although not certainly) what the speaker meant.
If this were a logic problem then Answer 3 would be the only correct answer. As others have already pointed out, the logical operator “or” means roughly “one or more of these things” while “xor” means “one and only one of these things”. But in everyday speech the word “or” must serve both roles.
I still say that in everyday speech ‘or’ is exclusive. See my post about dinner. If the waitress says, ‘Would you like soup, or salad?’ and I say ‘Yes.’ then she will not bring me soup AND salad for the listed price. Her response would be ‘You can have either soup OR salad.’
If someone offers me coffee and asks, ‘Cream or sugar?’ and I answer affirmatively, then I’m likely to get both. If I answer negatively, then I’ll probably get neither. So an extra step has to be made, specifying which I want (if I wanted cream OR sugar, but not both).
The coffee example backs up your assertion that OR = AND, but I think that is a special case. For most things, OR means OR exclusively. Are you driving north, or south? Your new car will come in red or silver or black or blue or white. Are all cats cats, or dogs?
Part of the confusion is that sometimes when we ask “Is P or Q true?” we’re asking a yes/no question. You’re supposed to answer “yes” if either P or Q (or both) is true and “no” otherwise. [I debated whether to use the word “or” in place of that last “and.” In that particular case, they may be more-or-less interchangeable.] Other times, we’re asking with the understanding that one of the two is true, and we want to know which.
For example, if I ask, “Did you or Susan lock the door?” I may want to know whether or not somebody locked the door; or I may know that the door was locked and want to know who did it.
Just to be clear, I don’t think “or” ever just means “and”, although as I recently learned there are some people who will take it that way*. But “or” does sometimes mean “and/or”. Aside from “Cream or sugar?” another common example would be saying to a guest “Would you like a drink or something to eat?” If I say “I’d love to visit Italy or France” then it’s unlikely I’d object to a trip that included both countries. I’ve rarely if ever heard anyone say “and/or” in speech. It’s fine in writing, but would seem awkward in an ordinary conversation.
I do agree that the exclusive sense of “or” seems more common, though. “Soup or salad?” means you get to pick one. It’s usually clear from context whether “or” is meant to be inclusive or exclusive, and if it isn’t clear then my assumption would be that I was supposed to choose just one of the available options.
*I still don’t understand it, but that’s what happened.
In Latin there are two words for or: aut and vel. (Sive also means ‘or’, but I’m not sure how it’s used.)
Aut means that only one of the options is possible. Vel implies that more than one can be true at a time.
If you had posted the sentence in Latin, the choice of wording would have removed the ambiguity present in the English sentence.
Omnia mala rubra, flava, aut viridia sunt. – This directly implies choice 2 in your poll, and only choice 2.
Omnia mala rubra, flava, vel viridia sunt. – This directly implies choice 4, and only choice 4. I.e., it allows for the possibility of an apple being any one of the colors, or any two of them, or heck, maybe even all three.
The ambiguity inherent in the English word or has led some to create the ungainly compound “and/or,” with the meaning of vel; presumably, the plain or is then taken as the equivalent of aut. Logically, OK, I can see that. But in terms of written English style, I don’t see any need to use “and/or” except maybe in legalese. In regular English, a simple “or” covers both meanings well enough.
