ANALOGY • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Analogy

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/ənˈælədʒi/ Listen

noun

Analogy n. (pl. analogies)

A resemblance of relations; an agreement or likeness between things in some circumstances or effects, when the things are otherwise entirely different. Thus, learning enlightens the mind, because it is to the mind what light is to the eye, enabling it to discover things before hidden. Note: Followed by between, to, or with; as, there is an analogy between these objects, or one thing has an analogy to or with another. Note: Analogy is very commonly used to denote similarity or essential resemblance; but its specific meaning is a similarity of relations, and in this consists the difference between the argument from example and that from analogy. In the former, we argue from the mere similarity of two things; in the latter, from the similarity of their relations.

(Biol.) A relation or correspondence in function, between organs or parts which are decidedly different.

(Geom.) Proportion; equality of ratios.

(Gram.) Conformity of words to the genius, structure, or general rules of a language; similarity of origin, inflection, or principle of pronunciation, and the like, as opposed to anomaly.

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Etymology of 'Analogy'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Analogy" Quotes from Famous Books

... passed and the months also; slowly and gradually the hope faded. The journey to Italy must be given up; she was not in condition to be brought home, and she reluctantly resigned herself to remain where she was and "convalesce," as she confidently believed, in the spring. Once again came the analogy, which she herself pointed out now, to Heine on his mattress-grave in Paris. She, too, the last time she went out, dragged herself to the Louvre, to the feet of the Venus, "the goddess without arms, who could not help." Only her indomitable will and intense desire to live seemed to ...

— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus

... and many a spirited free-thinker makes use of his freedom mainly to vent nonsense. We should he the better for a vigorous and watchful enemy to hammer us into cohesion and discipline; and I, for one, lament that the bench of Bishops cannot show a man of the calibre of Butler of the "Analogy," who, if he were alive, would make short work of much of the current a ...

— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley

... unknown ancestors of ours may (for all that we can tell) have been peculiarly open to them, and therefore peculiarly apt to believe in separable souls. In fact, when we write about these far-off founders of religion, we guess in the dark, or by the flickering light of analogy. The lower animals have faculties (as in their power of finding their way home through new unknown regions, and in the ants' modes of acquiring and communicating knowledge to each other) which are mysteries to us. The terror of dogs in 'haunted houses' ...

— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... weakness, despite the knowledge that her protector could no longer protect, the fear of the jungle faded from the heart of the young girl—she was no more a weak and trembling daughter of an effete civilization. Instead she was a lioness, watching over and protecting her sick mate. The analogy did not occur to her, but something else did as she saw the flushed face and fever wracked body of the man whose appeal to her she would have thought purely physical had she given the subject any analytic consideration; and as a realization of ...

— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... whose attention they are called. Many are content to accept them as strange and inexplicable at present, and to wait for further light upon them; others insist upon an immediate inquiry concerning their probable nature and meaning. Such an inquiry can only be based upon inference proceeding from analogy. Mars, say Mr Lowell and those who are of his opinion, is manifestly a solidly incrusted planet like the earth; it has an atmosphere, though one of great rarity; it has water vapor, as the snows in themselves prove; it has the alternation of day and night, ...

— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss

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