Equities

How to spell equities

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce equities

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does equities mean?

1. nounOrdinary shares or stocks representing ownership in companies, as a class of investment.
2. nounThe values of ownership interests in assets, calculated as worth remaining after debts are deducted.

Equities in a sentence

• The fund shifted money from bonds into equities to chase higher returns.

• Falling house prices wiped out the equities many families held in their homes.

• Her pension is split between cash, property, and global equities.

• The accountant listed the partners' equities in each property the firm owned.

Where does equities come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word descends from the Latin aequitas, meaning 'evenness', 'fairness', or 'justice', which was itself built on the adjective aequus, meaning 'equal' or 'level'. English took it in through Old French as 'equite' during the 1300s, and at first it carried the moral sense of fair and even-handed treatment. In English law a whole branch developed under this name, where courts of equity softened the rigid rules of common law in the interest of fairness. The financial sense came later: an owner's fair share or stake in a business or property was called their equity, and from there the plural 'equities' grew to mean ordinary shares or stocks. The spelling keeps the Latin 'equi-' opening seen in 'equal' and 'equator', so anchoring it to 'equal' helps fix the tricky middle vowel that sounds like a faint 'ih'.

How the word is built

• equi- (equal, fair, from Latin aequus)
• -ity (noun-forming suffix)
• -es (plural)