Also 7 æquivalence. [a. F. équivalence, ad. med.L. æquivalentia, f. æquivalent-em EQUIVALENT.]
1. The condition of being equivalent; equality of value, force, importance, significance, etc.
a. 1541. Wyatt, Poet. Wks. (1861), 203. When he weigheth the fault and recompense, He … findeth plain Atween them two no whit equivalence.
c. 1590. Greene, Fr. Bacon, Wks. (ed. Dyce), 173/2. Have you courted and found Castile fit To answer England in equivalence?
1652. J. Wadsworth, trans. Sandoval’s Civ. Wars Spain, 212. In satisfaction or equivalence thereof, hee might allow a pension or stipend to [etc.].
1655–60. Stanley, Hist. Philos. (1701), 476/1. Æquivalence we call an equality as to Belief or Unbelief.
1677. Hale, Prim. Orig. Man., I. ii. 53. No Organs … which are wanting in the constitution of the humane Body, at least in substance and equivalence.
1690. Norris, Beatitudes (1694), I. 214. Tho there be no Proportion of Equivalence between our best Works and the Rewards of Heaven.
1847. Lewes, Hist. Philos. (1867), I. Introd. 63. The whole stress of Verification consists in reducing propositions to identity or equivalence.
1870. Bowen, Logic, viii. 250. It brings to light very clearly the virtual equivalence of those Moods in the several Figures.
1890. Times, 4 Jan., 9/2. Gold and silver will … instantaneously assume equivalence at the ratio the Act names.
b. Physics. Equality of energy or effect.
1842. Joule & Thomson, in Grove, Corr. Phys. Forces (ed. 6), 61. This relation is not a relation of simple mechanical equivalence.
1878. Tait & Stewart, Unseen Univ., iii. 112. But the exact and formal enuntiation of the equivalence of heat and work … was given by Davy in 1812.
c. Equivalence of force: the doctrine that force of one kind becomes transformed into force of another kind of the same value. Cf. Conservation of energy, ENERGY 6.
1871. Tyndall, Fragm. Sc. (ed. 6), II. xiv. 348. No engine … can evade this law of equivalence, or perform on its own account the smallest modicum of work.
1863. B. Stewart, Conserv. Force, viii. 205. The doctrine called the correlation, persistence, equivalence, transmutability, indestructibility of force.
2. Chem. The doctrine that differing fixed quantities of different substances are ‘equivalent’ in chemical combinations.
1880. trans. Wurtz’ Atom. Th., 76. He mentions polybasic acids as forming an exception to the theory of equivalence.
