parse

[pahrs, pahrz] /pɑrs, pɑrz/
verb (used with object), parsed, parsing.
1.
to analyze (a sentence) in terms of grammatical constituents, identifying the parts of speech, syntactic relations, etc.
2.
to describe (a word in a sentence) grammatically, identifying the part of speech, inflectional form, syntactic function, etc.
3.
to analyze (something, as a speech or behavior) to discover its implications or uncover a deeper meaning:
Political columnists were in their glory, parsing the president's speech on the economy in minute detail.
4.
Computers. to analyze (a string of characters) in order to associate groups of characters with the syntactic units of the underlying grammar.
verb (used without object), parsed, parsing.
5.
to be able to be parsed; lend itself to parsing:
Sorry, but your concluding paragraph simply doesn't parse.
Origin
1545-55; < Latin pars part, as in pars ōrātiōnis part of speech
Related forms
parsable, adjective
parser, noun
misparse, verb (used with object), misparsed, misparsing.
unparsed, adjective
Examples from the web for parse
  • parse the call for proposals thoroughly, and make sure your proposal deals with all the criteria.
  • Maybe, as you say, you didn't parse the two out clearly enough.
  • It is the scientists' job to parse out exactly what is the relevance of our work to the public, as you do here.
  • As a result, different dentists parse the images differently.
  • They would be loathe to tell you they cheat, and are a lot craftier in the way they parse words.
  • Even with mountains of data and the tools to parse them, people's tastes remained elusive.
  • So this author parsed out the data one way, and you can choose to parse it another way.
  • Authority is a rather mysterious quality, and it's almost impossible to parse it for its components.
  • If a few say you don't grade fairly, then you have to parse that out and figure out what they may have had a problem with.
  • Find someone who can parse my sentence and you'll get your answer.
British Dictionary definitions for parse

parse

/pɑːz/
verb (grammar)
1.
to assign constituent structure to (a sentence or the words in a sentence)
2.
(intransitive) (of a word or linguistic element) to play a specified role in the structure of a sentence
3.
(computing) to analyse the source code of a computer program to make sure that it is structurally correct before it is compiled and turned into machine code
Derived Forms
parsable, adjective
parsing, noun
Word Origin
C16: from Latin pars (orātionis) part (of speech)
Word Origin and History for parse
v.

1550s, "to state the parts of speech in a sentence," verb use of Middle English pars (n.) "part of speech" (c.1300), from Old French pars, plural of part "part," from Latin pars (see part (n.)) in school question, Quae pars orationis? "What part of speech?" Transferred (non-grammatical) use is from 1788. Pars was a common plural of part (n.) in early Middle English. Related: Parsed; parsing.

parse in Technology


parser