Fair refers to fairness or equity in the way people are treated, and especially without bias or favoritism, as in “administered according to the principles of fairness”. Equality refers to the quality or status of having equal rights and opportunities, as in “women’s struggle for equal rights”.
Fair And Equality share the same final Latin root, but they share the meaning in the middle (so to speak), carving two separate nouns with some overlap in meaning.
The root word they share is aequus (pronounced \EYE-kwus\), which means “even” or “fair” or “equal”. Which has led to the direct premise of our English words: fair is from Latin EqualityAnd Equality is from Equality. Nearly identical and similar meanings aside, what’s different about these words in English is also different about them in Latin.
How to use ‘Equity’
Fair is an older word in English, appearing in the 1300s and it also has a wider range of meanings. It comes from the French derivative of Equality, fair, a word with a clear legal meaning; In French, it means “justice” or “rightness,” and those meanings, plus the phrase “fairness,” have also come to us in the English word.
A connection to justice is evident in this verse from the King James book of Biblical Proverbs:
Then you will understand righteousness, and judgment, and justice; yes, all the good roads.
This idea of ”justice” connects fair more direct with the law: in early modern England, there was an organization known as the “fair court” that ruled in cases where there was no satisfactory remedy in written law, finding seeking “natural justice” can then be taken as precedent. These courts later merged with the legal court system in the late 1800s. It is for this reason that, in the language of the United States Constitution, written within the context of the English legal system, fair mentioned next to law at the first sentence of Article III, Section 2:
The Judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, according to Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution
This was one of several seemingly redundant pairs in the rhetoric of the Constitution, common in the legal language of the time, including “rules and regulations,” “wages and symbols,” and “crimes.” crimes and misdemeanors”.
Relationship with assets, shares and stocks
A more familiar usage fair more connected with ideas of “proportionality” or “equilibrium” beginning with an initial legal designation known as equity of redemption; Noah Webster, himself a lawyer, included this meaning in his 1828 dictionary:
fair regarding the redemption, by law, of the advantage, permitted to the mortgagor, of a reasonable time to redeem the mortgaged land, when the estate is worth more than the amount for which it was mortgaged.
This usage leads to our modern meaning of “the value of an asset after deducting all liabilities,” (which is also the basis of a home loan) as well as the meaning of “stock.” share in a company” or “a share of stock in a company.” Indeed, in finance, the term stock is basically synonymous with share.
How to use ‘Equality’
Equality comes from the Middle French word Equalityderived from Latin Equalitywith essentially identical meanings over millennia referring to similarity in quantity as well as state or shape.
For a while in English, there was a form of competition in Equalitynow labeled Ancient; Shakespeare uses both words in his plays. It is difficult to generalize why one suffix would be used and not another, since while -ity derived from the Latin suffix -it’s like and seems like a natural fit for words based on Latin, German -ness sometimes dominant: noun corresponding to innocent used to Skillfulbut now it is innocence. Chances are there was a lot of support and assistance with these suffixes in early modern English.
Another weird thing with this word family is that we don’t usually use a predictable word like, say, egalitarianism. In this case, the French intervention period in the word’s history is the explanation: in French, the Latin \qu\ is pronounced \k\ through a process called lenition, but instead some sounds change to \g\, which means how the French gave English the word Equality. actual score, egalitarianism does not exist in English, suggested by those seeking to revert to Latin rather than French; it just doesn’t catch up. In modern French, Equality also spelled with \g\: Equality.
Similarity or equal distribution are key symbols of Equality. They can be distinguished from justice, fairness and impartiality, the main expressions of fair.
Words used with Equality indicates that the same treatment is the most common context:
marry
sex
society
race
economic
political
legal
Fair used most often in a financial context:
private
home page
steadiness
sex
fund
sweat
market
Sex is the word most frequently associated with fair unrelated to money, but it is also often associated with Equality—these terms overlap in use.
Sameness vs Fairness
The idea that sometimes the same treatment (Equality) does not lead to proportional justice (fair) is one way that these words are distinguished from one another, even in similar contexts. Sometimes this difference is explained by an illustration showing people of different heights using boxes to stand on to look over the fence; Equality is if all the boxes are identical, but fair is if the boxes were of different sizes to allow people, regardless of their height, the ability to see through the fence.
At the very least, when opening a printed dictionary, no matter how thick it is, you will have access to the same pages and the definitions will be written in a fair way.
Categories: Usage Notes
Source: vothisaucamau.edu.vn
