Wiktionary

inequality

English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From Middle English inequalite, from Old French inequalité, from Medieval Latin inaequālitās, from Latin inaequālis (“unequal”), from in- (“not”) + aequālis (“equal”).

Morphologically inequal +‎ -ity and in- +‎ equality.

Pronunciation

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Noun

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inequality (countable and uncountable, plural inequalities)

  1. An unfair, not equal, state.
    The inequality in living standards led to a civil war as the have nots rebelled.
    • 1976 February 14, A. Nolder Gay, “The View from the Closet”, in Gay Community News, volume 3, number 33, page 17:
      The traditional inequalities of marriage, such as changing her surname to his.
    • 2013 May 17, George Monbiot, “Money just makes the rich suffer”, in The Guardian Weekly‎[1], volume 188, number 23, page 19:
      In order to grant the rich these pleasures, the social contract is reconfigured. […]   The public realm is privatised, the regulations restraining the ultra–wealthy and the companies they control are abandoned, and Edwardian levels of inequality are almost fetishised.
    • 2025 July 9, Oliver Wheeler, “Action stations...”, in RAIL, number 1039, page 68:
      With the growing awareness of climate change, congestion, and regional inequality, rail transport has re-emerged as a solution.
  2. (mathematics) A statement that of two quantities one is specifically less than (or greater than) another. Symbol:   or   or   or   or  , as appropriate.
    The inequality   is less than  , together with that  , allows us to deduce the inequality  .
    • 2015, Brandon Fogel, “Multideviations: The hidden structure of Bell's theorems”, in arXiv‎[2]:
      I then specify a set of new tight Bell inequalities for arbitrary event spaces -- the "even/odd" inequalities -- which have a straightforward interpretation when expressed in terms of multideviations.
  3. unevenness, irregularity
    • 1881, Charles Darwin, The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms, page 313:
      When we behold a wide, turf-covered expanse, we should remember that its smoothness, upon which so much of its beauty depends, is mainly due to all the inequalities having been levelled by worms.

Synonyms

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Hyponyms

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Translations

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See also

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