Crossword clues for comparing
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Compare \Com*pare"\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Compared; p. pr. & vb. n. Comparing.] [L.comparare, fr. compar like or equal to another; com- + par equal: cf. F. comparer. See Pair, Peer an equal, and cf. Compeer.]
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To examine the character or qualities of, as of two or more persons or things, for the purpose of discovering their resemblances or differences; to bring into comparison; to regard with discriminating attention.
Compare dead happiness with living woe.
--Shak.The place he found beyond expression bright, Compared with aught on earth.
--Milton.Compare our faces and be judge yourself.
--Shak.To compare great things with small.
--Milton. -
To represent as similar, for the purpose of illustration; to liken.
Solon compared the people unto the sea, and orators and counselors to the winds; for that the sea would be calm and quiet if the winds did not trouble it.
--Bacon. -
(Gram.) To inflect according to the degrees of comparison; to state positive, comparative, and superlative forms of; as, most adjectives of one syllable are compared by affixing ``- er'' and ``-est'' to the positive form; as, black, blacker, blackest; those of more than one syllable are usually compared by prefixing ``more'' and ``most'', or ``less'' and ``least'', to the positive; as, beautiful, more beautiful, most beautiful.
Syn: To Compare, Compare with, Compare to.
Usage: Things are compared with each other in order to learn their relative value or excellence. Thus we compare Cicero with Demosthenes, for the sake of deciding which was the greater orator. One thing is compared to another because of a real or fanciful likeness or similarity which exists between them. Thus it has been common to compare the eloquence of Demosthenes to a thunderbolt, on account of its force, and the eloquence of Cicero to a conflagration, on account of its splendor. Burke compares the parks of London to the lungs of the human body.
Wiktionary
vb. (present participle of compare English)
WordNet
n. examining resemblances or differences [syn: comparison]
Usage examples of "comparing".
Let's begin by comparing the acceptability of different inventions within the same society.
We can infer the answer to this question by comparing modern societies at different levels of organization, by examining written accounts or archaeological evidence about past societies, and by observing how a society's institutions change over time.
The solution is to reconstruct the vocabularies of vanished ancient languages (so-called protolanguages) by comparing vocabularies of modern languages derived from them.
Nevertheless, as long as one understands that the table is a simplification, it is useful for comparing continental histories.
While those conclusions rest on archaeological evidence, there is also an independent method for dating the arrival of domestic plants and animals: by comparing the words for them in modern languages.
While neither astronomers studying galaxy formation nor human historians can manipulate their systems in controlled laboratory experiments, they both can take advantage of natural experiments, by comparing systems differing in the presence or absence (or in the strong or weak effect) of some putative causative factor.
For example, epidemiologists, forbidden to feed large amounts of salt to people experimentally, have still been able to identify effects of high salt intake by comparing groups of humans who already differ greatly in their salt intake.
In particular, epidemiology, the science of drawing inferences about human diseases by comparing groups of people (often by retrospective historical studies), has for a long time successfully employed formalized procedures for dealing with problems similar to those facing historians of human societies.
Not that new data aren't welcome, you understand, but comparing new and old would yield more.
A whole little academic community specialized in comparing the imagined worlds of Middle English science fiction with the way things had actually happened.
For another, you'll see one of your people comparing us to—I don't know whether they're specimens or records of my kind back when we were savages.
I have taken some pains in consulting and comparing modern travellers, with regard to the fate of those eleven cities of Asia.
We should disgrace the virtues of the Antonines by comparing them with the vices of Hercules or Jupiter.
By comparing these authors, it should seem that Maximin had the particular command of the Tribellian horse, with the general commission of disciplining the recruits of the whole army.
It was probably some ingenious fancy, of comparing the thirty tyrants of Rome with the thirty tyrants of Athens, that induced the writers of the Augustan History to select that celebrated number, which has been gradually received into a popular appellation.