a. and sb. [ad. med.L. analytic-us, a. Gr. ἀναλυτικ-ός analytic, f. ἀνάλυτ-ος dissolved, dissolvable, f. ἀναλύ-ειν: see ANALYSIS. Cf. Fr. analytique, perhaps earlier.]
A. adj.
1. Of, pertaining to, or in accordance with analysis; consisting in, or distinguished by, the resolution of compounds into their elements.
1601. B. Jonson, Poetaster, V. i. Wks. 1616, 332. A direct, and analyticke summe Of all the worth and first effects of artes.
1724. Watts, Logic, IV. i. (1813), 511. Natural method is … twofold, viz synthetic and analytic. Analytick method takes the whole compound as it finds it … and leads us into the knowledge of it by resolving it into its first principles.
1750. Johnson, Rambl., No. 54, ¶ 4. They are … understood without skill in analytick science.
1789. Bentham, Princ. Legisl., vi. § 46. Of the several circumstances … to give some sort of analytic view.
1802. Woodhouse, in Phil. Trans., XCII. 95. In the present state of analytic science, there is no certain and direct method of integrating differential equations.
1837–8. Sir W. Hamilton, Logic, xxiv. (1866), II. 7. The words analytic and synthetic … are, like most of our logical terms, taken from Geometry.
2. Concerned with, or addicted to the use of, analysis; analytical.
1805. Wordsw., Prel., II. (ed. 2), 40. A toil, Than analytic industry to me More pleasing.
1876. Farrar, Gk. Syntax, 2. Few languages are more analytic than English.
1880. R. St. John Tyrwhitt, in Contemp. Rev., XXXVII. 480. Analytic education makes against the creative search of beauty, which defies analysis.
B. sb. mostly pl. analytics, transl. L. analytica, a. Gr. ἀναλυτικά, adj. pl. neut., used subst. by Aristotle as title of his treatises on Logic.
1. gen. ‘The science or doctrine and use of analysis.’ Chambers.
1641. Hobbes, Lett., Wks. 1845, VII. 462. A better philosopher in my opinion then De Cartes, and not inferior to him in the analytiques.
1857. Sir J. Stephen, Lect. Hist. France, xvii. II. 154. Skill in the science of moral analytics.
2. spec. a. That part of logic that treats of analysis.
c. 1590. Marlowe, Faustus, i. 6. Live and die in Aristotle’s works. Sweet Analytics, ’tis thou hast ravish’d me.
1607. Topsell, Four-footed Beasts (1673), 353. Aristotles first book of Analyticks.
1663. Butler, Hud., I. I. 66. He was in Logick a great Critick, Profoundly skill’d in Analytick. (Annot. Analytique is a part of Logick that teaches to decline and construe Reason, as Grammar does Words.)
1837–8. Sir W. Hamilton, Logic, xii. (1866), I. 218. His [Aristotle’s] Prior Analytics, the treatise in which he develops the general forms of reasoning.
1846. (title) ibid., II. App. 251. A New Analytic of Logical Forms.
† b. The algebraical branches of pure mathematics; the application of algebra to geometry. Obs.
1656. Hobbes, Elem. Philos. (1839), 309. I should there have spoken of the analytics of geometricians.
1685. Phil. Trans., XV. 1104. My design being to trace this of the Analyticks (as the Greeks call’d it) or Algebra (as the Arabs).
1751. Chambers, Cycl., s.v., To the modern Analytics, principally, belongs algebra.
