analytikós

Analytikós is a transliteration of the Greek adjective αναλυτικός, meaning analytic or analytical. It is the masculine form; the feminine is analytikí and the neuter analytikó. In modern Greek, analytikós describes methods, reasoning, or explanations that break complex things into component parts, and it is used across science, philosophy, and everyday language to express a systematic, detail-oriented approach.

In the classical philosophical tradition, Analytiká refers to Aristotle’s group of works known in Latin as the Analytica, or the Analytics. These treatises establish foundational ideas about logic, demonstration, and inference and are traditionally divided into the Prior Analytics and the Posterior Analytics. They explore topics such as syllogistic structure, the nature of proof, and the conditions for deriving conclusions from premises, forming a cornerstone of the history of logic.

In contemporary usage, analytikós appears in titles and phrases across disciplines as the Greek counterpart to “analytic.” For example, αναλυτική φιλοσοφία denotes analytic philosophy, focused on language, logic, and scientific reasoning; αναλυτική χημεία refers to analytical chemistry; and αναλυτικές μελέτες or αναλυτική μεθοδολογία describe analytical approaches in research. The term also enters everyday language to describe methods or explanations characterized by careful breakdown and examination.

See also: Analytica Priora and Analytica Posteriora (Prior Analytics and Posterior Analytics), Aristotle’s landmark works on logic; analytic philosophy; analytical methods in science. While analytikós is primarily a linguistic and scholarly term in Greek, its usage spans both historical and contemporary contexts.