Given the same circumstances. This term began as the Latin phrase ceteris paribus; sometimes the word all is omitted, and else is substituted for other things. Eric Partridge held that the Latin form was already a cliché in the eighteenth century, and the English form became one in the late nineteenth century. Thomas Babington Macaulay was among the many learned writers who used it (although slightly differently) in his History of England (1849–61): “All other circumstances being supposed equal . . .”

See all other things being equal.

The doctrine that similar facilities for different groups justifies separating them from one another. This phrase became widely known through a Supreme Court decision of 1896 in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. Justice Henry B. Brown, speaking for the majority of the court, found that “separate but equal accommodations” for African Americans and whites satisfied the Fourteenth Amendment, which had been invoked by the plaintiff. The doctrine, which marked the low point of American race relations following the Civil War, was reversed in 1954 in several decisions by the Supreme Court, at that time led by Chief Justice Earl Warren. The most important of these decisions held that “separate but equal” has no place in public education, and that so-called separate but equal facilities are inherently unequal. Despite its close associations with the civil rights movement, the phrase was invoked in other contexts as well, such as gender discrimination (“Girls can’t play on the baseball team but they have their own softball team—separate but equal”).