parse
Americanverb (used with object)
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parses,
present (3rd person singular)
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parsed,
past participle, past
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parsing
present participle
-
to analyze (a sentence) in terms of grammatical constituents, identifying the parts of speech, syntactic relations, etc.
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to describe (a word in a sentence) grammatically, identifying the part of speech, inflectional form, syntactic function, etc.
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to analyze (something, as a speech or behavior) to discover its implications or uncover a deeper meaning.
Political columnists were in their glory, parsing the president's speech on the economy in minute detail.
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Computers. to analyze (a string of characters) in order to associate groups of characters with the syntactic units of the underlying grammar.
verb (used without object)
-
parses,
present (3rd person singular)
-
parsed,
past participle, past
-
parsing
present participle
verb
-
to assign constituent structure to (a sentence or the words in a sentence)
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(intr) (of a word or linguistic element) to play a specified role in the structure of a sentence
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computing to analyse the source code of a computer program to make sure that it is structurally correct before it is compiled and turned into machine code
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
parsesimple
-
parsessimple
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have parsedperfect
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has parsedperfect
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am parsingprogressive
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are parsingprogressive
-
is parsingprogressive
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have been parsingperfect progressive
-
has been parsingperfect progressive
Past
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parsedsimple
-
had parsedperfect
-
was parsingprogressive
-
were parsingprogressive
-
had been parsingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of parse
First recorded in 1545–55; from Latin pars “part,” as in pars ōrātiōnis “part of speech”
Explanation
When you parse a sentence, you break it into parts and analyze each element carefully. When your sweetheart shouts "You never listen!" it's a bad idea to parse that by replying, "I just heard you, so I must be listening." The ability to successfully parse language is important. A binding legal contract, for example, should be read very carefully so you know exactly what's going on. You can also parse things that are more personal. You might exhaustively parse the comments of the guy you have a desperate crush on for any hint that he shares your passionate feelings. The sad truth of the matter? If you have to parse, he probably doesn't love you. Apply your parsing skills elsewhere!
Vocabulary lists containing parse
Charming as Verb
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Educated
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The Martian
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The models also struggled to parse negation correctly, as in “take with food” versus “don’t take with food.”
From Slate ● Oct. 16, 2026
My English teachers and literature professors were probably too tired to parse such nuance, and I don’t blame them.
From Salon ● Oct. 3, 2026
Still, traders are likely to parse the speech for insights on the Fed’s broader policy framework and how Warsh defines it, possibly in terms of inflation persistence and forward guidance.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 28, 2026
Investors will also be looking forward to Fed Chair Kevin Warsh’s keynote address from the Jackson Hole, Wyo., economic-policy symposium on Friday, hoping to parse indications of the Fed’s strategy on interest rates.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 23, 2026
But to encourage the reader to parse it as a noun phrase, he should have set up a context in which the reader indeed expects to see a noun phrase.
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
Bank of America parses its customers’ bank and credit card accounts to see who is receiving wages or unemployment benefits to gauge the state of the labor market.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 8, 2025
She can hear it in the audible gasps of onlookers as she parses a moment in the pandemic that they had forgotten.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 14, 2023
Throughout the album, which arrived in January, Wolf parses the past by mulling how others used to treat her and how she felt about herself.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 8, 2023
The Long Short-Term Memory network, originally developed to help machines learn human languages, parses detailed inflation data to spot patterns that helps it predict the Consumer Price Index in the future.
From Reuters ● Aug. 10, 2022
"The rover currently parses the signal into bytes, then identifies the specific sequence the Hab sends. That way, natural radio waves won't throw off the homing. If the bytes aren't right, the rover ignores them."
From "The Martian" by Andy Weir
—Asian equities were mostly lower as investors parsed valuations following Wall Street’s recent rally.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 6, 2026
Together, Flynn and Teruko parsed through her life stories to give the show an arc.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 3, 2026
For his part, Thomas writes as though history resides principally in legal texts, 19th-century dictionaries, and carefully parsed debates over sovereignty.
From Slate ● Jul. 2, 2026
Yardeni and his team parsed the official data released monthly by the Treasury Department, and found that foreign investors poured more than $1.4 trillion into U.S. assets during the 12 months through April 2026.
From MarketWatch ● Jun. 28, 2026
They'll be quoted, parsed, fact-checked, eviscerated by those who disagree, and then forgotten in the wake of new blurbs that come out tomorrow.
From "How It Went Down" by Kekla Magoon
It is a powerful distinction, though Mr. Rebeiro’s penchant for parsing interpretive categories occasionally makes a straightforward insight more juridically elaborate than it needs to be.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 4, 2026
For investors parsing the regulatory filings, these industry trends supporting the stock carry far more weight than a few automated transactions.
From Barron's ● Jun. 18, 2026
Eastern Daylight Time, is worth quoting and parsing:
From Slate ● Jun. 11, 2026
The phrase might also carry a double meaning, one Grohl is still parsing.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 29, 2026
The first is to find the correct branches, a process called parsing.
From "The Sense of Style" by Steven Pinker
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
