 <p>That would only work if <code>operator||(string,string)</code> returned.. a sort of collection of strings and you had an <code>Equals</code> overload that took a string and that collection of strings and verified that the string is in the collection. Seems like a lot of work done behind the scenes for a very rarely used construct.</p> <p>Especially since you already can do something like:</p> <pre><code>if(new string[]{"firstName","lastName"}.Contains(stringName)) // code </code></pre>