From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishbe the equal of somebody/somethingbe the equal of somebody/somethingto be as good as someone or something else The company proved to be the equal of its US rivals. → equal
Examples from the Corpus
be the equal of somebody/something• Deneb is exceptionally luminous, and is the equal of at least 60000 Suns.• His control was the equal of Mushtaq Ahmed's and his variations were finely applied.• The facilities for e-mail, file transfers and newsgroup messages are the equal of most Internet software packages on the market.• People is the equal of Novocain any day, and, as a bonus, there are no needles.• Who on the allied side was the equal of any one of them?• It would be an extensive and sometimes brutal business, but the Society was the equal of the challenge.• All types of medicines reputed to be the equal of branded goods except that generally they were just a load of rubbish.• Since one woman is the equal of any other, woman-centred psychologists can claim the right to represent the rest. 