parity

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

1. n. Equality, as in amount, status, or value.
2. n. Functional equivalence, as in the weaponry or military strength of adversaries: "A problem that has troubled the U.S.-Soviet relationship from the beginning has been the issue of parity” ( Charles William Maynes).
3. n. The equivalent in value of a sum of money expressed in terms of a different currency at a fixed official rate of exchange.
4. n. Equality of prices of goods or securities in two different markets.
5. n. A level for farm-product prices maintained by governmental support and intended to give farmers the same purchasing power they had during a chosen base period.
6. n. Mathematics The even or odd quality of an integer. If two integers are both odd or both even, they are said to have the same parity; if one is odd and one even, they have different parity.
7. n. Physics An intrinsic symmetry property of subatomic particles that is characterized by the behavior of the wave function of such particles under reflection through the origin of spatial coordinates.
8. n. Physics A quantum number, either +1 (even) or -1 (odd), that mathematically describes this property.
9. n. Computer Science The even or odd quality of the number of 1's or 0's in a binary code, often used to determine the integrity of data especially after transmission.
10. n. Computer Science A parity bit.
11. n. The condition of having given birth.
12. n. The number of children borne by one woman.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. Equality; similarity or close correspondence or equivalence as regards state, position, condition, quality, degree, etc.
2. n. In logic,analogy; similarity; similar or like course, as of reasoning or argument.
3. n. Specifically, in ecclesiastical history,the equality of religious bodies in their relations to the state, their standing in universities, etc.; the principle of such equality; in Presbyterian churches, the equality of all the members of the clerical order.
4. n. The condition of being able to bear offspring.
5. n. In banking and com.: An equivalence in the currency of another country. See mint par, under par.
6. n. Equivalence in or between money of different metals as legal tender, in the proportions of weight and quality fixed by law.
7. n. Same as par, 3.

Wiktionary

1. n. Equality; comparability of strength or intensity.
2. n. A set with the property of having all of its elements belonging to one of two disjoint subsets, especially a set of integers split in subsets of even and odd elements.
3. n. The classification of an element of a set with parity into one of the two sets.
4. n. Symmetry of interactions under spatial inversion.
5. n. In reversi, the last move within a given sector of the board.
6. n. The number of times a woman has given birth.

GNU Webster's 1913

1. n. The quality or condition of being equal or equivalent; a like state or degree; equality; equivalence; close correspondence; analogy.
2. n. Equivalence in value to the currency of another country.
3. n. A property assigned to elementary particles, conceptualized as a form of symmetry, representing the fact that no fundamental distinctions can be observed between right-handed and left-handed systems of particles in their interactions, and supported by the typical observation that the total parity of a system is unchanged as particles are created or annihilated; however, certain interactions involving the weak force have been shown to violate the principle of conservation of parity.
4. n. A property of the wave function of a system, which takes the value of +1 or -1, indicating whether the value of the wave function changes sign if each of the variables of the system is replaced by its negative.
5. n. The condition of having borne a child or children, alive or dead.
6. n. The property of being even or odd.
7. n. The property of having an even or odd number of bits set to the value of 1 (as opposed to 0); -- applied to bytes or larger groups of bits in a data structure. It is used mostly in the process of parity checking. The parity of a data structure can be changed by changing the value of the parity bit.

WordNet 3.0

1. n. functional equality
2. n. (computer science) a bit that is used in an error detection procedure in which a 0 or 1 is added to each group of bits so that it will have either an odd number of 1's or an even number of 1's; e.g., if the parity is odd then any group of bits that arrives with an even number of 1's must contain an error
3. n. (mathematics) a relation between a pair of integers: if both integers are odd or both are even they have the same parity; if one is odd and the other is even they have different parity
4. n. (physics) parity is conserved in a universe in which the laws of physics are the same in a right-handed system of coordinates as in a left-handed system
5. n. (obstetrics) the number of liveborn children a woman has delivered