analyse
Americanverb (used with object)
verb
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to examine in detail in order to discover meaning, essential features, etc
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to break down into components or essential features
to analyse a financial structure
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to make a mathematical, chemical, grammatical, etc, analysis of
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another word for psychoanalyse
Other Word Forms
Etymology
Origin of analyse
C17: back formation from analysis
Explanation
To analyse (analyze is U.S. English) something is to consider it in detail so you can figure out its workings or meaning. Analyse comes from Greek roots meaning "loosen." If you analyse something, it's as if you're untying it and letting the different parts separate so that you can study them. If you've got some mystery substance, you can analyse it by performing chemical reactions to break it into its parts. If you analyse a poem, you look at it word-by-word and even sound-by-sound. But remember that analyse is a British spelling, with analyze as the American version.
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 Bengaluru-based startup Dognosis is using AI to analyse dogs' brain activity, respiration and body language -- turning their reaction to scent into data.
From Barron's ● Sep. 7, 2026
He said he had been using a microscope to analyse the cuticles, and different layers of the bear's fur as well as its DNA.
From BBC ● Sep. 6, 2026
"It's an incredibly exciting time, the kind of event every astro-particle physicist dreams of, and we can't wait to analyse more data to see if additional candidate events appear."
From BBC ● Sep. 2, 2026
The Jewish way of thinking "helped me to analyse the conflict and what I wanted to do, and how I want to be involved in this conflict in a different way", he said.
From Barron's ● Aug. 27, 2026
But it was interesting, once I started to analyse and sort the examples, to discover that the greengrocer’s apostrophe formed just one depressing category of the overall, total, mind-bogglingly depressing misuse of the apostrophe.
From "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Author
The mountain section whose collapse triggered fatal floods in Nepal and China on August 26 had experienced unprecedented heat for the time of year, meteorological data analysed by a researcher shows.
From Barron's ● Sep. 8, 2026
But, at that point, the FBI had not shipped all of the evidence found in Birmingham back to the US, let alone exhaustively analysed it.
From BBC ● Sep. 7, 2026
The plane diagram was sent to the FBI's New York office and was analysed, according to an FBI source.
From BBC ● Sep. 7, 2026
BBC Verify has analysed dozens of videos of attacks in Gaza carried out since the ceasefire.
From BBC ● Sep. 2, 2026
Borelli treated the body as a system of levers acted on by the forces exerted by the muscles, and analysed geometrically how muscles in the human body acted in walking and running.
From "The Scientists" by John Gribbin
AFP therefore complemented the global picture by independently analysing data from the European Copernicus programme.
From Barron's ● Aug. 10, 2026
After analysing the debris from the crash, Bulgaria's defence ministry however said that "currently, nothing suggests that this was a deliberate incident".
From Barron's ● Aug. 8, 2026
The short, dramatic flash it created would have been hard to catch by amateur astronomers even with high-end telescopes, but larger observatories in the Americas are analysing the information.
From BBC ● Aug. 5, 2026
The scientific divers who found the sample were mapping and analysing seaweeds to check on the health of Cornish maerl beds, a project organised by Natural England.
From BBC ● Jul. 31, 2026
His induction searches for the true “form” of light, heat and so forth, analysing the external “form” given in perception into simpler “forms” and their “differences.”
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 10, Slice 6 "Foraminifera" to "Fox, Edward" by Various
Definitions 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.
