analogy

Definition from Wiktionary, a free dictionary

Contents 1 English 1.1 Etymology 1.2 Pronunciation 1.3 Noun 1.3.1 Synonyms 1.3.2 Derived terms 1.3.3 Related terms 1.3.4 Translations 1.3.5 See also

[edit] English

Wikipedia

[edit] Etymology

From Latin analogia from Ancient Greek ἀναλογία (analogia) from ἀνά (ana) + λόγος (logos), “‘speech, reckoning’”)

[edit] Pronunciation

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[edit] Noun

analogy (plural analogies)

1. The use of a similar example or model to explain or extrapolate from.

   The birthing class instructor used a balloon and a ping-pong ball as an analogy for the baby in the womb.

   Many use the Gospels' analogy of a mustard seed growing into a huge plant to explain faith.

   • 1997: Chris Horrocks, Introducing Foucault, page 67, The Renaissance Episteme (Totem Books, Icon Books; ISBN 1840460865)

     Words and things were united in their resemblance. Renaissance man thought in terms of similitudes: the theatre of life, the mirror of nature. There were four ranges of resemblance.
     Aemulation was similitude within distance: the sky resembled a face because it had “eyes” — the sun and moon.
     Convenientia connected things near to one another, e.g. animal and plant, making a great “chain” of being.
     Analogy: a wider range based less on likeness than on similar relations.
     Sympathy likened anything to anything else in universal attraction, e.g. the fate of men to the course of the planets.

[edit] Synonyms

• parable

[edit] Derived terms

• false analogy

[edit] Related terms

• analogue
• disanalogy

[edit] Translations

[edit] See also

• metaphor
• simile
• example
• homology
• parallelism