Parse

//pɑːz// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An act of parsing; a parsing.

    "The parse will fail if the program contains an unrecognised keyword."

  2. 2
    The result of such an act; a parsing.

    "This parse is incorrect and indicates a fault in the parser."

Verb
  1. 1
    To resolve (a sentence, etc.) into its elements, pointing out the several parts of speech, and their relation to each other by agreement or government; to analyze and describe grammatically. ambitransitive
  2. 2
    analyze syntactically by assigning a constituent structure to (a sentence) wordnet
  3. 3
    To examine closely; to scrutinize. transitive
  4. 4
    To split (a file or other input) into pieces of data that can be easily manipulated or stored. ambitransitive
  5. 5
    To resolve (a string of code or text) into its elements to determine if it conforms to a particular grammar. transitive
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  1. 6
    Of a string of code or text, sentence, etc.: to conform to rules of grammar, to be syntactically valid. intransitive

    "This sentence doesn't parse."

Synonyms

All synonyms
analyzeblock outbracketconjugateconstruedecline

Example

More examples

"Not complying with the naming conventions will result in parse errors."

Etymology

Possibly from Middle English pars (“parts, shares; parts of speech, grammar”), from Old French pars (plural of part (“part, portion, share”)), from Latin pars (“part, piece, share”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *per- (“to carry forth; to sell”).

Related phrases

most vexing parseparse treepart of speechpoint out

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.