# nLab strict terminal object

Contents

category theory

## Applications

#### Limits and colimits

limits and colimits

# Contents

## Idea

The trivial ring, among all unital rings, has two characteristic properties:

1. there is a unique function into the trivial ring, from any other unital ring;

2. there is no function from the trivial ring, except to itself.

The first property generalizes to arbitrary categories as the property of a terminal object.

The corresponding generalization including also the second property is that of a strict terminal object:

## Definition

A terminal object $\mathbf{1}$ is called a strict terminal object if every morphism from $\mathbf{1}$ is an isomorphism:

$\mathbf{1} \overset{\simeq}{\longrightarrow} \X \,.$

## Examples

• Trivial unital ring

• Trivial Boolean algebra

• In general, for any algebraic theory with two constants $0$ and $1$ and a binary operation for which $0$ is a (left) absorbing element and $1$ is a (left) unit, the trivial model is strictly terminal.

## References

Last revised on April 16, 2021 at 03:29:19. See the history of this page for a list of all contributions to it.