mindmap
root((PAR))
parity
The state of being equal.
🌱That year the Canadian dollar reached parity with the U.S. dollar for the first time in three decades. 🌳Parity has special meanings in such fields as physics, math, medicine, genetics, and marketing. Back when the Soviet Union and the U.S. were opposing superpowers, there was often talk of parity in nuclear weapons between the two sides. We sometimes hear about parity between mental and physical health in insurance coverage, or parity in colleges' funding of men's and women's athletics. But parity may be most common in discussions of currencies. The exchange rate between two national currencies often changes every day, as each drifts higher or lower, and occasionally two similar currencies, such as the euro and the U.S. dollar, will achieve parity, but it rarely lasts long. disparity A noticeable and often unfair difference between people or things.
🌱He'd been noticing an increasing disparity between what the government was claiming and what he saw happening all around him. 🌳Disparity contains the Latin dis, meaning "apart" or "non-" （See DIS,） so a disparity is a kind of "nonequality." The word is often used to describe a social or economic condition that's considered unfairly unequal: a racial disparity in hiring, a health disparity between the rich and the poor, an income disparity between men and women, and so on. Its adjective, disparate （accented on the first syllable, is often used to emphasize strong differences. nonpareil Someone or something of unequaled excellence.
🌱Critics seem to agree that this is the new nonpareil of video-game consoles, the one to beat. 🌳American children learn this word （even if they can't pronounce it） as the name of the candies covered with white sugar pellets that they buy at the movie theater, and it's also the name of the pellets themselves. But the more general meaning is common too. Nonpareil is also an adjective. A famous boxing champion of the 1920s was known as Nonpareil Jack Dempsey, when he wasn't being called "the Manassa Mauler." Like its synonyms paragon and peerless, nonpareil is popular as a company and product name; it's also the name of a fruit, an almond, a bird, and a butterfly. subpar Below a usual or normal level.
🌱Because of a severe cold, her performance that evening had been subpar, but the audience seemed to love it anyway. 🌳Since sub- means "below" （See SUB,） almost anything that fails to measure up to a traditional standard may be called subpar. So you may hear of subpar ratings for a TV show, subpar care at a nursing home, subpar attendance at a concert, or subpar work by a contractor. If you played a subpar round of golf, though, you needed more strokes than you should have.
🌱That year the Canadian dollar reached parity with the U.S. dollar for the first time in three decades. 🌳Parity has special meanings in such fields as physics, math, medicine, genetics, and marketing. Back when the Soviet Union and the U.S. were opposing superpowers, there was often talk of parity in nuclear weapons between the two sides. We sometimes hear about parity between mental and physical health in insurance coverage, or parity in colleges' funding of men's and women's athletics. But parity may be most common in discussions of currencies. The exchange rate between two national currencies often changes every day, as each drifts higher or lower, and occasionally two similar currencies, such as the euro and the U.S. dollar, will achieve parity, but it rarely lasts long. disparity A noticeable and often unfair difference between people or things.
🌱He'd been noticing an increasing disparity between what the government was claiming and what he saw happening all around him. 🌳Disparity contains the Latin dis, meaning "apart" or "non-" （See DIS,） so a disparity is a kind of "nonequality." The word is often used to describe a social or economic condition that's considered unfairly unequal: a racial disparity in hiring, a health disparity between the rich and the poor, an income disparity between men and women, and so on. Its adjective, disparate （accented on the first syllable, is often used to emphasize strong differences. nonpareil Someone or something of unequaled excellence.
🌱Critics seem to agree that this is the new nonpareil of video-game consoles, the one to beat. 🌳American children learn this word （even if they can't pronounce it） as the name of the candies covered with white sugar pellets that they buy at the movie theater, and it's also the name of the pellets themselves. But the more general meaning is common too. Nonpareil is also an adjective. A famous boxing champion of the 1920s was known as Nonpareil Jack Dempsey, when he wasn't being called "the Manassa Mauler." Like its synonyms paragon and peerless, nonpareil is popular as a company and product name; it's also the name of a fruit, an almond, a bird, and a butterfly. subpar Below a usual or normal level.
🌱Because of a severe cold, her performance that evening had been subpar, but the audience seemed to love it anyway. 🌳Since sub- means "below" （See SUB,） almost anything that fails to measure up to a traditional standard may be called subpar. So you may hear of subpar ratings for a TV show, subpar care at a nursing home, subpar attendance at a concert, or subpar work by a contractor. If you played a subpar round of golf, though, you needed more strokes than you should have.
PAR, from the Latin, means "equal." Our English word par means an amount taken as an average or a standard, and especially the standard score for each hole on a golf course—which is why the phrase "par for the course" means "about as well as expected." We compare things to see if they're equal; similar things can be called comparable—that is, "equal with." And "on a par with" means "comparable to."🌸