Other forms: equalities
Equality is everybody counting the same — the same rights, the same treatment, the same chances, whoever they happen to be. Equal pay for the same work, one person one vote, a queue where nobody gets waved to the front.
It takes OF, or a word in front of it: equality of opportunity, gender equality, racial equality, equality before the law. Keep it apart from equity, its close relative, which means giving each person what they need to end up level rather than giving everyone the identical thing. In maths and computing, equality is plainer — two things having exactly the same value, which is what the equals sign states. The adjective is equal, the adverb equally, and the word you will meet most in reports is the opposite, inequality, because that is the part people write about.
1nounequalityThe state of everyone having the same rights, status and chances.
“The march was about equality before the law.”
2nounamountThe state of being the same in amount, value or size.
“The line states the equality of the two sides of the equation.”
equality is a social and political idea.
Equality came through Middle French equalité — modern French égalité, the middle word of the Revolution's motto — from Latin aequalitas. It is a doublet of equity: the same Latin family walked into English twice by different roads, and the two words have been drifting apart ever since.
Latin
aequalitas
Middle French
equalité
English, today
equality
Middle French equalité (modern French égalité), from Latin aequalitas. a doublet of equity. by surface analysis, en + equal + ity
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA