analysis
Pluralanalyses
- 1Detailed examination of something by studying its parts and how they relate, or the findings or account produced by that examination.
His analysis of the novel focused on its recurring images of water.
Careful analyses of the data exposed a flaw in the original argument.
UsageSay an analysis of something, and carry out or do an analysis. The plural is analyses, like crises.
Similarexamination, study, evaluation, assessment, breakdown
Oppositesynthesis
- 2The process of breaking a substance down into its constituent parts to find out what it contains, or the result of that process.
The analysis revealed traces of lead in the old paint.
Forensic analyses of the residue confirmed the presence of gunpowder.
UsageLabs run or carry out an analysis on a sample; the general process is often just chemical analysis, with no article.
Similartest, assay, examination
Oppositesynthesis
Note
Two questions sit inside the chemist's word: what is in the sample, and how much of it. Qualitative work names the constituents present. Quantitative work measures how much of each the sample contains. Together they make up the work of analytical chemistry.
- 3A broad branch of modern mathematics that developed out of calculus, concerned with the behavior of functions, sequences, series, limits, and related structures.
Mathematical analysis provides the rigorous foundations underlying calculus.
Much of modern physics relies on tools developed in analysis.
Note
Mathematicians use the bare word for a whole discipline: the one that grew from the calculus and is often named in the same breath as algebra. Where the everyday meaning could intrude, the full name, mathematical analysis, removes the doubt.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 1 fact
- Mathematical analysis developed out of calculus. en.wikipedia.org
Less common meanings
- 4Psychoanalytic therapy, which explores unconscious thoughts and feelings to treat emotional and mental difficulties.
He spent three years in analysis with a Freudian therapist.
Her analysis helped her uncover memories she had long suppressed.
UsageUse be in analysis for receiving this treatment and go into analysis for beginning it.
Similarpsychoanalysis, therapy
Note
Psychology has clipped the word from psychoanalysis, and the short form now stands in for the full one. Context supplies the missing prefix. In talk of therapists, dreams or the unconscious, the bare word points here rather than to the general breaking-down sense.
- 5A method of proof that assumes the result being sought and reasons from it back to truths already accepted, the reverse of synthesis.
The geometer's analysis began by assuming the figure already drawn, then worked back to known theorems.
In Greek geometry, an analysis was usually followed by a synthesis that ran the same steps forward.
Note
Here the word names a kind of argument rather than an examination. It starts by supposing the result already proved and reasons back to truths already granted, and Greek geometers then ran the steps forward as a synthesis. It is easy to blur with the breaking-down sense. The test is direction: this analysis works backward from what is sought.
Checked 2 Nov 2026 · 2 facts
- The method assumes the sought result and reasons backward to accepted truths. mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk
- Greek geometers reversed the analysis to produce a synthesis. mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk
Practice
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Origin
Greek ana- ("thoroughly") and lúō ("I loosen") combined in analúō ("I unravel, investigate"), from which came Ancient Greek análusis and then Medieval Latin analysis.