May 15, 2003

parse

[from linguistic terminology] vt.

1. To determine the syntactic structure of a sentence or other utterance (close to the standard English meaning). That was the one I saw you. I can't parse that.

2. More generally, to understand or comprehend. It's very simple; you just kretch the glims and then aos the zotz. I can't parse that.

3. Of fish, to have to remove the bones yourself. I object to parsing fish, means I don't want to get a whole fish, but a sliced one is okay. A parsed fish has been deboned. There is some controversy over whether unparsed should mean ‘bony’, or also mean ‘deboned’.

Posted by Jargon File at May 15, 2003 10:35 AM

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