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inequality

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English

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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. Absence of equality.
    Alternative form: inæquality (archaic, rare)
    Synonyms: unequality, unequalness, inequalness
    Antonyms: equality, equalness
    1. A condition or state (of social, cultural, or legal matters) that is not equal; especially, such a condition that is thereby also unfair.
      Hyponyms: iniquity (high degree); marriage inequality
      Coordinate terms: inequity, unfairness (equity and fairness are not always equality, but some inequality is inequitable and unfair)
      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.
      Synonym: inequation
      Hyponyms: Bhatia-Davis inequality, Bonferroni inequality, Boole's inequality, Cauchy-Schwarz inequality, Chebyshev's inequality, CHSH inequality, Jensen's inequality, Minkowski inequality, periodic inequality, Popoviciu's inequality, Schwarz inequality, triangle inequality, von Neumann's inequality
      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. (of surfaces or objects) Unevenness, irregularity.
      Antonyms: evenness, regularity, smoothness
      • 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.

Derived terms

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Translations

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See also

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