EQUITABLE

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does equitable mean? 

• EQUITABLE (adjective)
  The adjective EQUITABLE has 1 sense:

1. fair to all parties as dictated by reason and conscience

  Familiarity information: EQUITABLE used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• EQUITABLE (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Fair to all parties as dictated by reason and conscience

Synonyms:

equitable; just

Context example:

an equitable distribution of gifts among the children

Similar:

fair; honest (gained or earned without cheating or stealing)

evenhanded (without partiality)

Also:

fair; just (free from favoritism or self-interest or bias or deception; conforming with established standards or rules)

just (used especially of what is legally or ethically right or proper or fitting)

impartial (showing lack of favoritism)

Antonym:

inequitable (not equitable or fair)

 Context examples 

All Huntingdon exclaimed on the greatness of the match, and her uncle, the lawyer, himself, allowed her to be at least three thousand pounds short of any equitable claim to it.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

Oh, Frankenstein, be not equitable to every other and trample upon me alone, to whom thy justice, and even thy clemency and affection, is most due.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

It had formerly been my endeavour to study all sides of his character: to take the bad with the good; and from the just weighing of both, to form an equitable judgment.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

He said, it was common, when two Yahoos discovered such a stone in a field, and were contending which of them should be the proprietor, a third would take the advantage, and carry it away from them both; which my master would needs contend to have some kind of resemblance with our suits at law; wherein I thought it for our credit not to undeceive him; since the decision he mentioned was much more equitable than many decrees among us; because the plaintiff and defendant there lost nothing beside the stone they contended for: whereas our courts of equity would never have dismissed the cause, while either of them had any thing left.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)