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parity

UK/ˈpæɹɪti/
nounC1Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,988 of 15,258mostly written

Parity is being equal in status, pay or value. Pay parity, reach parity, parity of esteem.

In money it means one currency equalling another, so the euro reaching parity with the dollar is a headline in itself. Parity of esteem is the phrase for treating mental and physical health as equally important.

Definitions of parity

  1. 1nounparityBeing equal in status, pay or value.C1

    “Women footballers are still fighting for pay parity with the men.”

parity is an equality.

Where it comes from

Latin paritas comes from par, equal, the same root that gives par in golf and a pair.

  1. Latin

    paritās

  2. Middle French

    parité

  3. English, today

    parity

From Middle French parité, from Latin paritās, from Latin pār (“equal”). Equivalent to pari- + -ty.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

parity in the wild

  • Mesons are classified according to their quark content, total angular momentum, parity and various other properties, such as C-parity and G-parity.

    Meson

  • By contrast, the simple parity code cannot correct errors, and can detect only an odd number of bits in error.

    Hamming code

  • In his original paper, Hamming elaborated his general idea, but specifically focused on the Hamming(7,4) code which adds three parity bits to four bits of data.

    Hamming code

  • In mathematics, parity is the property of an integer of whether it is even or odd.

    Parity (mathematics)

  • A parity bit, or check bit, is a bit added to a string of binary code.

    Parity bit

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

  • disparity