# analogy

Pronunciation: say "uh-NAL-uh-jee" /əˈnæləd͡ʒi/

## Noun

1. A comparison between two things based on their resemblance, used especially as a basis for explanation or for drawing further conclusions.
   - Simple: A way of explaining something by showing how it is like another thing.
   - _The lawyer drew an analogy between this case and a famous earlier ruling._
   - _His favorite analogy compared the economy to a living organism that grows and contracts._
2. The tendency of a word or phrase to follow the regular patterns of a language, as seen in how its words are normally formed and inflected.
   - Simple: The way new word forms are made to match the usual patterns of a language.
   - _The past tense "dived" arose by analogy with other regular verbs._
   - _Speakers extended the plural ending through analogy, reshaping several older irregular forms._
3. Equality between two ratios; a proportion in which one pair of quantities relates to each other as another pair does.
   - Simple: When two ratios are equal, like 2 to 4 being the same as 3 to 6.
   - _Euclid built much of his geometry on the analogy of equal ratios._
   - _The proof depends on an analogy between the matching sides of the two triangles._

## Origin

From Latin analogia, itself from Ancient Greek ἀναλογίᾱ (analogíā), formed from the prefix ἀνα- (ana-) plus λόγος (lógos, 'speech, reckoning').

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/analogy (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).