Disparity
noun ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 The state of being unequal; difference. uncountable
"With no great disparity between them in point of years, they were, in every other respect, as unlike and far removed from each other as two men could well be. The one was soft-spoken, delicately made, precise, and elegant; the other, a burly square-built man, negligently dressed, rough and abrupt in manner, stern, and, in his present mood, forbidding both in look and speech."
- 2 inequality or difference in some respect wordnet
- 3 Incongruity. countable
Example
More examples"There is in all barbarian communities a profound sense of the disparity between man's and woman's work."
Etymology
From Middle French disparité, from Latin disparitātem, accusative of disparitās, from dispār + -tās, from dis- + pār. By surface analysis, dis- + parity.
Related phrases
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.