Word Of The Day

Word of the Day for Sunday August 14, 2005

pari passu \PAIR-ih-PASS-oo\, adverb:

• At an equal pace or rate.

Expand the state and [its] destructive capacity necessarily expands too, pari passu.
--Paul Johnson, Modern Times: The World From the Twenties to the Eighties

Independent hedge funds can sell their holdings in a stock all at once, but if a hedge fund is part of a mutual fund company, it generally must sell pari passu... with the company's mutual funds that hold the same stock, constraining flexibility.
--Geraldine Fabrikant, "Should You Bristle at These Hedges?" New York Times, November 8, 1998

Pari passu literally means "with equal step," from Latin pari, ablative of par, "equal" + passu, ablative of passus, "step."