In a presidential setting there is a little bit more room now for a marriage of equals, as we see when Michelle Obama outshines her husband with brilliant speeches.
The language of description is always a matter of equivalence (a word equals the thing it describes) and so cannot contend with the sublime.
"The saying that a healthy body equals a healthy mind is absolutely true," says Quentin Sloper, head of sport, music and drama at Durham University.
"Transfield has been an exemplary corporate citizen and its record of philanthropic support for arts companies and events has few equals in Australia," the letter said.
Aleksandr Petrovsky Mikhail Baryshnikov in the Rag & Bone campaign equals the perfect excuse to revisit the SATC character.
But they are also took part in all our discussions about routes and destinations, engaging with the adults as equals.
The number of lost Leonardo works almost equals his known paintings.
We stand shoulder to shoulder with migrants, refugees and asylum seekers in their efforts to live here in freedom and safety, to contribute to society and be treated as equals.
I have been wearing two pairs of flares, in real life: a new silky high-waisted black pair, £39.99 from Zara (it says wide-leg trousers on the website, but since the width of my thigh equals that of the trousers, they are definitely flares in my book) and an old pair of Made In Heaven flared jeans which are flat-fronted with a double row of gold buttons down each hipbone.
But as I grew older I understood the English did not see the UK as a partnership of equals.
First, the movement away from the medieval and early modern understanding of marriage as a property transaction, in which a father gave away a daughter to another man for dynastic purposes, towards a contract of equals for the relief of loneliness and "conversation", to use Milton's word.
