a. [f. med.L. analytic-us (see prec.) + -AL 1. The earliest spelling is analeticall, and in 15th c. L. analeticus is of freq. occurrence.]
1. Of or pertaining to analytics; employing the analytic method or process.
c. 1525. Skelton, Replyc. Maister Porphiris problemes … in his thre maner of clerkly workes, analeticall, topicall, and logycall.
1591. Percivall, Sp. Dict., A iij b. Marke my first analytical table.
a. 1652. J. Smith, Sel. Disc., VII. i. (1821), 308. The principles of true religion … are all so clear and perspicuous, that they need no key of analytical demonstration to unlock them.
1750. Harris, Hermes (1841), 119. We shall postpone the whole synthetical part … and confine ourselves to the analytical; that is to say, universal grammar.
1873. Symonds, Grk. Poets, i. 14. Homer was never analytical. He described the world without raising a single moral or psychological question.
b. Lang. Expressing the various notions and relations into which a proposition or complex notion may be analyzed, by distinct words, instead of combining several into one word; as, they shall be sent out for ē-mitt-ē-nt-ur; with a sword for gladio; plus fort for fortior; of man for man’s.
1873. Farrar, Fam. of Speech, ii. 74. The Swedish and Danish … have become more analytical than Old Norse.
1874. Sayce, Comp. Philol., ix. 368. The analytical character of the modern European languages, of which English is the most extreme example.
2. Of analysis. = ANALYTIC a. 1.
1656. Hobbes, Elem. Philos., I. vi. § 10. Eng. Wks. I. 79. There is need partly of the analytical and partly of the synthetical method.
1802. Woodhouse, in Phil. Trans., XCII. 105. I shall now shew, by a purely analytical process, what are the divisions of xn ± a.n
1847. Whewell, Philos. Induct. Sc., I. 144. Having succeeded in this analytical process, we may invert it.
