Noun

(en noun)

The act of comparing or the state or process of being compared.

:

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-07-20, volume=408, issue=8845, magazine=(The Economist)

, title= Old soldiers? , passage=Whether modern, industrial man is less or more warlike than his hunter-gatherer ancestors is impossible to determine. The machine gun is so much more lethal than the bow and arrow that comparisons are meaningless.}}

An evaluation of the similarities and differences of one or more things relative to some other or each-other.

:

* (1800-1859)

*:As sharp legal practitioners, no class of human beings can bear comparison with them.

*(Richard Chenevix Trench) (1807-1886)

*:The miracles of our Lord and those of the Old Testament afford many interesting points of comparison .

*

*:"I don't want to spoil any comparison you are going to make," said Jim, "but I was at Winchester and New College." ¶ "That will do," said Mackenzie. "I was dragged up at the workhouse school till I was twelve."

With a negation, the state of being similar or alike.

:

(label) The ability of adjectives and adverbs to form three degrees, as in hot, hotter, hottest .

That to which, or with which, a thing is compared, as being equal or like; illustration; similitude.

*(Bible), (w) iv. 30

*:Whereto shall we liken the kingdom of God? Or with what comparison shall we compare it?

(label) A simile.

(label) The faculty of the reflective group which is supposed to perceive resemblances and contrasts.

Noun

(en noun)

The state or condition of being parallel; agreement in direction, tendency, or character.

The state of being in agreement or similarity; resemblance, correspondence, analogy.

*1946 , (Bertrand Russell), History of Western Philosophy , I.29:

*:Plutarch (c.'' AD 46-120), in his ''Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans , traced a parallelism between the most eminent men of the two countries.

A parallel position; the relation of parallels.

(rhetoric, grammar) The juxtaposition of two or more identical or equivalent syntactic constructions, especially those expressing the same sentiment with slight modifications, introduced for rhetorical effect.

(philosophy) The doctrine that matter and mind do not causally interact but that physiological events in the brain or body nonetheless occur simultaneously with matching events in the mind.

(legal) In antitrust law, the practice of competitors of raising prices by roughly the same amount at roughly the same time, without engaging in a formal agreement to do so.

(biology) Similarity of features between two species resulting from their having taken similar evolutionary paths following their initial divergence from a common ancestor.

(computing) The use of parallel methods in hardware or software.