to parse

[Jonathan Lighter]

Sorry, Joel, but to "examine or analyze minutely" isn't the sense context
seems to impose in most of these cases, though today's is a little closer.

CNN wasn't wondering whether Mitt needs to "examine or analyze" Bain
"minutely."  They wondered whether he needs to explain its workings to the
public, minutely or otherwise - presumably otherwise.

The "parsing" of the cave paintings was evidently done by the artist, not
the critics. The stylized warriors are arranged in a certain fashion to
*show* that they're "in opposition."

Anyway, my point is not that these are weird, radical new senses (though I
could easily be persuaded about the last one), but that they *are* new, and
that in certain circles "parse" is hot stuff.

JL

On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 10:59 AM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: to parse
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 5/24/2012 08:10 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >"To explain in detail."
> CNN asks a Republi
> the hot new, fun new way to say "determine; understand exactly"
> can spokesman whether Bain Capital is "something Mitt
> >Romney needs to go through or parse through" for voters.
>
> The various examples of parse in this chain seem
> not unusual or nor wild extensions to me; they
> all seem instances of "analyze" in some
> manner.  Jon wrote initially "It's the hot new,
> fun new way to say 'determine; understand
> exactly'".  But it was also the old fun way, whichever old century one
> picks:
>
> 2. trans. In extended use: to examine or analyse minutely.
> 1788   F. Grose Rules Caricaturas 14   When you
> wish to draw a face from recollection you must
> well commit it to memory, by parsing it in your
> mind (as schoolboys term it) by naming the
> contour and different species of features of which it is constructed.
> ...
> 1962   P. Tompkins Spy in Rome xxxi. 307   Franco
> spoke Italian with a slightly foreign (or
> aristocratic) accent­depending on which way the listener chose to parse it.
> 2001   Newsweek 17 Dec. 60/1   Science has parsed
> nearly every move of every Olympic event and
> figured out what athletes must do to bring back the gold.
>
> (Garson noted this sense earlier, and gave examples from 1996 and 2002.)
>
> "Analyze" is not far from "try to understand".  And even in
>
> "1999 David D. Perlmutter _Visions of War_ (N.Y.: St. Martin's)  53: The
> two
> sides [in a prehistoric rock painting of warriors] are parsed so that there
> is no doubt that they are in opposition."
>
> which Jon called "app. = "arrange; dispose in
> pattern", "arrange" is not far from "analyze",
> even though it is visual rather than verbal.
>
> "Parse fact from fiction" seems to arise
> naturally from the necessity to analyze
> sentences, and just moves from written to spoken.
>
> Joel
>
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