Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Word of the Day

pari passu \PAIR-ee-PASS-oo; 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."

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