reciprocity

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   the practice or expectation of exchanging comparable actions, help, feelings, or advantages for mutual benefit

   Healthy collaboration depends on reciprocity: each team shares data and receives useful results in return.

2. 2
   noun

   the mutual granting or recognition of equivalent legal, diplomatic, or commercial rights between states or organizations

   The treaty guarantees reciprocity, allowing citizens of either country the same professional privileges.

3. 3
   noun

   in science, a symmetry by which exchanging two systems, observers, or source-and-response positions leaves a stated relation unchanged

   In special relativity, reciprocity allows either inertial observer to regard the other as moving.

Borrowed through French reciprocite from Medieval Latin reciprocitas, based on Latin reciprocus ("returning the same way; alternating"). The concrete idea of movement back and forth developed into mutual action, exchange, and the technical principle that two roles may be interchanged under stated conditions.

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