analogia

Forms

analogia f (genitive analogiae); first declension^[1] Varro, Seneca and Quintilian also use the Greek accusative analogian.^[2]

Etymology

It is borrowed from Ancient Greek ἀναλογία (analogía, “proportion”).^[3][4][2][5] The Greek word is formed from ἀνά (aná, “upon, according to”) and λόγος (lógos, “ratio, word, reckoning”).^[6][7]

Earliest recorded meaning

Varro (116–27 BC) uses it very often,^[2][7] both for a ratio or proportion and, in grammar, for regularity in the inflection and derivation of words, the subject of books 8 to 10 of his work on the Latin language.^[3][4]

Semantic evolution

Cicero still wrote the word in Greek letters in a letter to Atticus.^[4] Grammarians debated how far analogia should be followed in speech, and Caesar wrote a treatise De Analogia.^[3] Seneca uses it in philosophy for reasoning from parallel cases.^[3] The glossaries explain it as similitudo and proportio.^[2]

In Ecclesiastical Latin it meant harmony or resemblance.^[8] English took it in the early 15th century, from French or directly from Latin, in the sense “correspondence, proportion”.^[6]

Timeline

• 116–27 BC – Varro uses it of proportion and of grammatical regularity.^[3][2][7]
• 81–43 BC – Cicero writes it in Greek letters.^[4][7]
• 4 BC–65 AD – Seneca uses it of reasoning from parallel cases.^[3][7]
• early 15th century – Borrowed into English as analogy.^[6]

Meanings

Noun

1. Ratio, proportion.^[3][2]
2. (grammar) Regularity in the inflections and derivatives of words, and its use as a standard; analogy.^[3][4]
3. (logic) Reasoning from parallel cases.^[3]
4. (Ecclesiastical Latin) Harmony, resemblance.^[8]

References

1. ^ a b c Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f Thesaurus linguae Latinae (1900–), Leipzig: Teubner; Berlin: De Gruyter; open-access ed., Munich: Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Glare, P. G. W., ed. (2012), Oxford Latin Dictionary, 2nd ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e Lewis, Charlton T.; Short, Charles (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
5. ^ Saalfeld, Günther Alexander (1874), Index Graecorum vocabulorum in linguam latinam translatorum, Berlin: Weidmann
6. ^ a b c Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
7. ^ a b c d e Köbler, Gerhard (2010), Lateinisches Abkunfts- und Wirkungswörterbuch für Altertum und Mittelalter, online ed., koeblergerhard.de
8. ^ a b Stelten, Leo F. (1995), Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin, Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson