ANALOGY. A comparison or correspondence between two things because of a third element that they are considered to share. An analogy is usually framed in order to describe or explain the nature of something: for example, time in ‘Let me give you an analogy. Time is like a river. Just as the river flows from higher to lower ground, so time flows from the past into the future.’ Once the time/river analogy has been drawn, people can talk about the flow of time and the currents of history. When such usages are established, their users may forget the analogy and come to think of them as statements of fact: what else can time do but flow? Because analogies depend on the concept as if, they often take the form of METAPHORS and SIMILES.

Grammar

In traditional language teaching, such PARADIGMS as the conjugations of Latin and French display inflections in a fixed order, using a REGULAR form of the verb for each class of inflections. In French, j'aime (I love) is to tu aimes (thou lovest) as j'adore (I adore) is to tu adores (thou adorest). Students learn to apply the basic example to all words of the same type and in this way can form nous adorons (we adore) from nous aimons (we love). In learning a language, children and students constantly make such analogies, both on their own and under guidance. Sometimes, however, they engage in false analogy. Here, the child or student uses such known relationships as cat: cats and dog: dogs to produce sheep: *sheeps. The analogy has been correctly applied but is false because languages are not completely logical or analogical.

Word-formation

In LEXICOLOGY, many words are described as created by analogy with other words: that is, new forms are modelled on older forms, as when cavalcade (a procession of horses and riders) prompted the formation of camelcade (a procession of camels) and motorcade (a procession of cars). In addition to the semantics of processions, important factors here appear to be a pattern of three syllables in which sole or primary stress falls on the first. The phonologically suitable beavercade is semantically unlikely, however, while the semantically suitable elephantcade is phonologically unlikely. Through such analogizing, the suffix -cade (meaning ‘procession of’) is added to the language, its use subject to certain constraints. This kind of analogy is fundamental to the formation of compound and derived words.

Rhetoric

Analogies are commonly employed for rhetorical, stylistic, or dramatic effect, often in the service of a social or political position:
Planet Earth is 4,600 million years old. If we condense this inconceivable time-span into an understandable concept, we can liken Earth to a person of 46 years of age. Nothing is known about the first 7 years of this person's life, and whilst only scattered information exists about the middle span, we know that only at the age 42 did the Earth begin to flower. Dinosaurs and great reptiles did not appear until one year ago, when the planet was 45. Mammals arrived only 8 months ago; in the middle of last week man-like apes evolved into ape-like men, and at the weekend the last ice age enveloped the Earth. Modern man has been around for four hours. During the last hour, Man discovered agriculture. The industrial revolution began a minute ago. During those sixty seconds of biological time, Modern Man has made a rubbish tip of Paradise (from a Greenpeace recruiting and fund-raising pamphlet, 1989).

See ALLUSION, FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE, USAGE, WORD-FORMATION.

a·nal·o·gy / əˈnaləjē/ • n. (pl. -gies) a comparison between two things, typically on the basis of their structure and for the purpose of explanation or clarification: an analogy between the workings of nature and those of human societies. ∎  a correspondence or partial similarity: the syndrome is called deep dysgraphia because of its analogy to deep dyslexia. ∎  a thing that is comparable to something else in significant respects: works of art were seen as an analogy for works of nature. ∎  Logic a process of arguing from similarity in known respects to similarity in other respects. ∎  Linguistics a process by which new words and inflections are created on the basis of regularities in the form of existing ones. ∎  Biol. the resemblance of function between organs that have a different evolutionary origin. DERIVATIVES: an·a·log·i·cal / ˌanəˈläjikəl/ adj. an·a·log·i·cal·ly adv. ORIGIN: late Middle English (in the sense ‘appropriateness, correspondence’): from French analogie, Latin analogia ‘proportion,’ from Greek, from analogos ‘proportionate.’

analogy Analogies, much employed in the Bible, are a means of reasoning by the use of parallel cases, and ‘analogy’ is therefore an umbrella term covering similes, metaphors, typology, and allegory. Thus Paul refers to Christ as a ‘rock’ (1 Cor. 10: 4), where he uses the account in Num. 20: 11 of the gushing of water out of a rock. The Jews of the 1st cent. CE believed that this supernatural rock somehow accompanied the Israelites on their journeyings through the wilderness together with the numinous cloud. So Paul applies this belief by analogy to Christ as the rock who gives life to his people. An analogy between sleep and death is found in 1 Thess. 5: 10.

For the medieval philosopher Thomas Aquinas the concept of analogy was fundamental as being an intelligible means of referring to the relationships between God and mankind; there are attributes of God which are similar to but not identical with those of human beings, as when we talk of the love of God.

analogy. In common modern usage the word signifies a resemblance or similarity between objects of discourse. More technically analogy is a linguistic and semantic phenomenon which occurs when one word bears different but related meanings, as in the expressions a healthy diet and a healthy complexion. In theology it helps to explain how one can significantly refer to God by means of words more usually used of creatures. Thus one can meaningfully say that ‘God is wise’ and ‘Solomon is wise’, even though the wisdom of God is incomprehensible. The use of analogy in talking about God allows us to employ arguments about Him which abide by common rules of logic and proceed by means of terms for which there is already some (non-theological) meaning. The recognition that our discourse about God can be analogical is a corrective to anthropomorphism or any tendency to imply that God is the same kind of thing as any nameable creature.

Analogy. A proportional similarity. Most theological discussion of analogy has been concerned with analogical predication, a mode of predication in which terms familiar in one context are used in an extended sense elsewhere. Thus it is claimed that terms like ‘love’, ‘wisdom’, and ‘living’, which are learnt in everyday contexts, are applied to God by analogy because of some relationship (e.g. likeness, exemplarity, participation, and causation) between God's perfections and these human attributes.

According to Thomas Aquinas, such a mode of predication is midway between univocity and equivocation (Summa Theologiae, 1a, xiii. 5). Terms like ‘family resemblance’, ‘open texture’, and ‘systematic equivocation’, used in 20th-cent. analytic philosophy, may be regarded as akin to analogy. See also TANZĪH; NYĀYA (for upamana).

analogy in biology, the similarities in function, but differences in evolutionary origin, of body structures in different organisms. For example, the wing of a bird is analogous to the wing of an insect, since both are used for flight. However, there is no common ancestral origin in the evolution of these structures: While the wings of birds are modified skeletal forelimbs, insect wings are extensions of the body wall. Although insects and birds do have a very remote common ancestry (more than 600 million years ago), the wings of the two groups evolved after their ancestries had separated. See also homology .

ANALOGY

The inference that two or more things that are similar to each other in some respects are also similar in other respects.

An analogy denotes that similarity exists in some characteristics of things that are otherwise not alike.

In a legal argument, an analogy may be used when there is no precedent (prior case law close in facts and legal principles) in point. Reasoning by analogy involves referring to a case that concerns unrelated subject matter but is governed by the same general principles and applying those principles to the case at hand.

analogy proportion XV; similarity, parallelism XVII. — (O)F. analogie or L. analogia — Gr. analogíā equality of ratios, f. análogos (see prec.).
So analogic XVII, analogical XVI.

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