[f. ANALOGIZE, -ISM: see -IST.]
1. One who occupies himself with analogies, either in searching for them, pointing them out, or arguing from them.
1836. Emerson, Nature, 35. Man is an analogist and studies relations in all objects. Ibid. (1856), Eng. Traits, xiv. 239. Bacon, in the structure of his mind, held of the analogists, of the idealists, or (as we popularly say, naming from the best example) Platonists.
1860. Farrar, Orig. Lang., 139. The Universe itself … is a mighty emblem, and man is the analogist who, by the Word that lighteth him, is enabled to decipher it.
2. A philosopher who saw in words images or analogues of the things expressed by them.
1860. Farrar, Orig. Lang., i. 7. The philosophers who held these views [that language was innate] were called Analogists, while those who leaned to the conventional origin of language were styled Anomalists.
