# In plain language, what’s the difference between two things that are ‘equivalent’, ‘equal’, and ‘identical’?

In plain language, what’s the difference between two things that are ‘equivalent’, ‘equal’, ‘identical’, and isomorphic?

If the answer depends on the area of mathematics, then please take the question in the context of logical systems and statements.

Convention may vary, but the following is, I guess, how most mathematicians would use these notions. Identical and equal are very often used synonymously. However, sometimes identical is meant to say that the two things are not just equal, but actually are syntactically equal. For instance, take $x=2$. The claim that $x^2=4$ is saying that $x^2$ and $4$ are equal. The claim that $x^2=x^2$ is saying that $x^2$ is equal to $x^2$, but we also say that the left hand side and the right hand side are identical.
Equivalence is a strictly weaker notion than equality. It can be formalized in many different ways. For instance, as an equivalence relation. The identity relation is always an equivalence relation, but not the other way around. A typical way to obtain an equivalence is to suppress some properties of the objects you study, and only look at particular aspects of them. A classical example is modular arithmetic. We say that $10$ and $20$ are equivalent modulo $5$, basically saying that while $10$ and $20$ are not equal, if the only thing we care about is their divisibility by $5$, then they are the same.