parsing

[ pahr-sing ]

noun

1. the act or process of analyzing sentences or their elements grammatically:

   Many sites offer additional help for those studying classical Greek texts, such as quick parsing and translation.

2. the act or process of analyzing language, behavior, events, etc., closely or minutely to discover their implications or deeper meaning:

   At first I interpreted the case the same way, but on second thought, and after careful parsing of the press releases, it's not as clear-cut.

   There will always be opportunities to entertain disquisitions on the subject, more detailed parsing of the circumstances, and so on.

3. Computers. the process of analyzing character strings in order to associate them with syntactic units of the underlying grammar:

   If the file path contains spaces, use double quotes to ensure correct parsing.

Word History and Origins

Origin of parsing¹

pars(e) ( def ) + -ing ¹( def )

Example Sentences

We could start by parsing the jokes, gags, and laugh-riots that the president-elect and his allies crassly dispensed in the final weeks of the race.

From Salon

The difficulty in parsing exactly what the former president means also makes it hard to determine how literally to take him, even if his comments do inspire worry.

From Salon

News outlets ended up with articles bogged down in parsing federal law, carefully defining what exactly counts as an altercation, and quoting milquetoast official statements like “There was an incident and a report was filed.”

From Salon

We need to keep literally grounded in Earth reality as means of parsing all these narratives.

From Salon

An AI, one day, might diagnose the cause of my patient’s swollen lymph nodes, parsing a database through a sequence of responses to the software’s questions — all before I may have even met him.

From Salon