equal

• Near-synonyms: equivalent; see also Thesaurus:equal
• Dr. [Eugenia] Cheng's latest book, Unequal: The Math of When Things Do and Don’t Add Up, is all about equations and will be released in the United States on Tuesday. But it is more than a regurgitation of the many...

Synonyms: equivalent

1. (usually not comparable) The same in value (status, merit, etc): having or deserving the same rights or treatment.

   • We hold that all men are created equal and are thus equal under the law.
   • All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than the others. - 1945, George Orwell, Animal Farm:
   • [Under] the combat exclusion [preventing women from serving in combat...] Women are not equal citizens; women are a certain kind of citizen, a separate class with distinctly lower status. - 1983, Law & Inequality:

   Synonyms: equivalent

2. The same in all respects that matter practically; interchangeable, fungible, or (even sometimes) identical for practical purposes.

   • Equal conditions should produce equal results.
   • All else being equal, we can expect this factor to have no discernible effect by itself.
   • They who are not disposed to receive them may let them alone or reject them; it is equal to me. - 1705, George Cheyne, The Philosophical Principles of Religion Natural and Revealed:

   Synonyms: equivalent

3. (mathematics, not comparable) Exactly identical, having the same value.

   • All right angles are equal.
   • The skipper Mr. Cooke had hired at Far Harbor was a God-fearing man with a luke warm interest in his new billet and employer, and had only been prevailed upon to take charge of the yacht after the offer of an emolument...

   Synonyms: equivalent

• it could not but much redound to the lustre of your milde and equall Government, when as private persons are hereby animated to thinke ye better pleas'd with publick advice, then other statists have been delighted...
• Are not my ways equal? - 1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Ezekiel 18:29:
• Thee, O Jove, no equall judge I deem. - 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto VI”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 35:

Synonyms: objective unbiased candid cold clinical detached egal equal equitable evenhanded fairhanded fair-minded disinterested dispassionate impartial imprejudicate indifferent indistinguishing neuter neutral nonaligned nonpartial nonpartisan nonpersonal

• This test is pretty tough, but I think I'm equal to it.
• be equal to the task
• Here was a man some twenty thousand miles from home, by the way of Cape Horn, that is—which was the only way he could get there—thrown among people as strange to him as though he were in the planet Jupiter; and yet he...

• an equal movement
• an equal temper - 1693, Decimus Junius Juvenalis, John Dryden, transl., “[The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis.] The Tenth Satyr”, in The Satires of Decimus Junius Juvenalis. Translated into English Verse. […]...

Synonyms: even fair uniform unvarying constant changeless equal nonchanging static stationary unaltering unchanging consistent equable even-keeled monotonous regular samely stable steady uncheckered unvaried

• We're all equals here.
• This beer has no equal.
• Those who were once his equals envy and defame him. - 1712 January 3 (Gregorian calendar), [Joseph Addison; Richard Steele et al.], “SUNDAY, December 24, 1711”, in The Spectator, number 256; republished in Alexander...

• Thou that presum'st to weigh the world anew, And all things to an equall to restore. - 1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book V, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

• Two plus two equals four.

• David equaled the water levels of the bottles, so they now both contain exactly 1 liter.
• There was an even more remarkable attendance figure that underscores the devotion exhibited by our fans, because it was in 1991 that they set a single season in-stadium attendance record that has never been equaled. -...

• And what delights can equal those ⁠That stir the spirit’s inner deeps, ⁠When one that loves but knows not, reaps A truth from one that loves and knows? - 1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto XLI”, in In Memoriam,...

• Losing this deal equals losing your job.
• Might does not equal right.
• Eclectic and sophisticated are hence coded as negative traits–so cool equaling not so cool–putting Swift in seemed lockstep with the anti-intellectual sentiment that's led to the astonishing 21st-Century Bubbafication...