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Compare   /kəmpˈɛr/   Listen
verb
Compare  v. t.  (past & past part. compared; pres. part. comparing)  
1.
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." "The place he found beyond expression bright, Compared with aught on earth." "Compare our faces and be judge yourself." "To compare great things with small."
2.
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."
3.
(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.
Synonyms: To Compare, Compare with, Compare to. 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.


Compare  v. t.  To get; to procure; to obtain; to acquire (Obs.) "To fill his bags, and richesse to compare."


Compare  v. i.  
1.
To be like or equal; to admit, or be worthy of, comparison; as, his later work does not compare with his earlier. "I should compare with him in excellence."
2.
To vie; to assume a likeness or equality. "Shall pack horses... compare with Caesars?"


noun
Compare  n.  
1.
Comparison. (Archaic) "His mighty champion, strong beyond compare." "Their small galleys may not hold compare With our tall ships."
2.
Illustration by comparison; simile. (Obs.) "Rhymes full of protest, of oath, and big compare."
Beyond compare. See Beyond comparison, under Comparison.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Compare" Quotes from Famous Books



... imagine acquiring anything: conviction, principle, or any attitude of mind except by simple experience. I think we may experience in an ordinary life all that is necessary to build a sufficient and adequate world view. And what I read means nothing to me except where I can compare it with my own experience or consider it in relation to my own experience. I do not think that I can have a proper world view until I am old enough to have had time to experience life and I don't want to go ahead of my ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... Compare Hawthorne's description, in the "Mosses," of a day spent on the Assabeth with Ellery Channing, with any chapter in Thoreau's "Week." Moonlight and high noon! The great romancer gives a dreamy, poetic version of the river landscape, musically phrased, pictorially composed, dissolved in ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... And at that instante the Ladie Isabell, whoe thoughte that the duchesse had taken in euill parte the comparison that she had made betweene her brother and her, somwhat in choler and heate, said vnto her: "Madame, you shall pardon mee for that I haue so much forgotten my selfe, to presume to compare your beautie to his: whereof if he be to be commended, yet I maye well be blamed, being his sister, to publishe the same in an vnknowen place: notwithstanding, I am wel assured, that when you shall speake, euen ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance; it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united by canals. If a man was to compare the effect of a single stroke of a pickaxe, or of one impression of the spade, with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... beautiful landscape setting. There is nowhere in Japan the lavish expenditure of money on elaborate and imposing architecture which characterizes American colleges and stations, but in equipment for research work, both as to professional staff and appliances, they compare favorably with similar institutions in America. The dormitory system was in vogue in the college, providing room and board at eight yen per month or four dollars of our currency. Eight students were assigned to one commodious room, each provided with a study table, but ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King


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