parse

Etymology

It is probably a verbal use from Middle English pars (“parts of speech”),^{[2][3][4][5][6]} recorded from about 1330 in the sense "parts of speech, grammar",^[7] which is from Old French pars (“parts”), the plural of part,^[7][5][6] from Latin pars (“part, piece”).^[5][2] The Latin word was used in the school question “Quae pars ōrātiōnis?”, "What part of speech?",^{[4][5][8][9][10]} and the OED allows that the verb may come directly from Latin pars rather than from the Middle English noun.^[11] Hoad and the Shorter Oxford consider the origin uncertain.^[12][13] Etymonline and the American Heritage Dictionary trace pars to Proto-Indo-European *perə- (“to grant, allot”).^[5][2] The word is thus related to part.^[4][8][10]

Earliest recorded meaning

To describe the grammatical role of a word in a sentence, or to resolve a sentence into its parts of speech: before 1568, in Roger Ascham's Scholemaster (published 1570).^[11] Merriam-Webster Unabridged dates the verb to about 1568,^[14] Barnhart to before 1553,^[3][4] Etymonline to the 1550s^[5] and Dictionary.com to 1545–55.^[15] Hoad lists the 16th-century spellings pars, parse, peirse and pearse, and parce or pearce in the 17th century.^[12]

Semantic evolution

For two centuries the word belonged to the grammar school: Johnson (1755) remarked that it was "a word only used in grammar schools", and quoted Ascham's advice to have pupils "parse it over perfectly".^[16] From 1788 it was used more widely for examining or analysing something minutely.^[11][14] From 1880 it was also intransitive, of a sentence that admits of being parsed or conforms to the rules of syntax, also figuratively.^[11][17] In 1962 it was taken into computing for the analysis of a string into its syntactic parts, to test whether it conforms to a grammar,^[11][17] and the noun parse, the act or result of parsing, followed in 1963.^[11]

Timeline

• before 1568 – to describe a word grammatically, or to resolve a sentence into its parts of speech.^[11][14]
• 1788 – to examine or analyse minutely.^[11]
• 1867 – to test a pupil in parsing (rare).^[11]
• 1880 – intransitive, to admit of being parsed; to conform to the rules of syntax.^[11]
• 1962 – in computing, to analyse a string into its syntactic components.^[11]
• 1963 – noun, the act or result of parsing.^[11]

Meanings

Verb

1. To break a sentence down into its parts of speech and describe their grammatical form and relationships: The class parsed each clause of the poem.^[14][17][11]
2. To describe a single word grammatically, giving its part of speech, inflection and syntactic role.^[14][11]
3. Of a sentence or word, to admit of being parsed; to fit the rules of syntax.^[17][11]
4. To examine or analyse something closely and critically: Analysts parsed every word of the minister's statement.^[14][11]
5. (computing) To analyse a string or the source code of a program into its syntactic components, as a check on its structure before it is processed or compiled.^[17][11]

Noun

1. (computing) The act or result of parsing a string or text.^[11]

Word family

• parser
• parsable
• unparsed
• misparse

Related words

• part
• parcel
• particle
• party

Usage notes

The usual pronunciation is with /z/ in Britain and with /s/ in the United States.^[11][14] The OED notes that its first edition (1904) also gave a pronunciation with /s/ in British English, in line with all other words ending in -rse.^[11]

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
3. ^ a b Barnhart, Robert K., ed. (1995), The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology, New York: HarperCollins
4. ^ a b c d Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
5. ^ a b c d e f Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ a b Stevenson, Angus, ed. (2010), Oxford Dictionary of English, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
7. ^ a b Kurath, Hans; Kuhn, Sherman M.; Lewis, Robert E., eds. (1952–2001), Middle English Dictionary, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; online edition ed. Frances McSparran et al. (2000–2018)
8. ^ a b Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
9. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
10. ^ a b Skeat, Walter W. (1911), A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, new ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press
11. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
12. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
13. ^ Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
14. ^ a b c d e f g Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
15. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
16. ^ Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
17. ^ a b c d e Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins