Result from Foreign Dictionaries (2 entries found)

From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48 [gcide]: Parity \Par"i*ty\, n. [L. paritas, fr. par, paris, equal: cf. F. parit['e]. See {Pair}, {Peer} an equal.] 1. The quality or condition of being equal or equivalent; a like state or degree; equality; equivalence; close correspondence; analogy; as, parity of reasoning. "No parity of principle." --De Quincey. [1913 Webster] Equality of length and parity of numeration. --Sir T. Browne. [1913 Webster] 2. Specifically: (Finance) Equivalence in value to the currency of another country. [PJC] 3. (Physics) 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. [PJC] 4. (Physics) 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. [PJC] 5. (Med.) The condition of having borne a child or children, alive or dead. [PJC] 6. (Math.) The property of being even or odd; as, 3 has odd parity, but 6 has even parity. [PJC] 7. Hence: (Computers) 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}. [PJC] From WordNet (r) 3.0 (2006) [wn]: parity n 1: (obstetrics) the number of liveborn children a woman has delivered; "the parity of the mother must be considered"; "a bipara is a woman who has given birth to two children" [syn: {parity}, {para}] 2: (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; "parity is often used to check the integrity of transmitted data" 3: (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 [syn: {parity bit}, {parity}, {check bit}] 4: (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 [syn: {parity}, {conservation of parity}, {space-reflection symmetry}, {mirror symmetry}] 5: functional equality