How do you solve analogy live is to life as examine is to?

Answer 1

In working out my answer, I was distracted by thoughts along the lines of the quote, "The unexamined life is not worth living." [I am pretty sure that is either Plato or Socrates]. You can read my rigourous thinking if you like - some of which was necessary regardless - but you may as well just jump straight to the answer - "Independently of that…" etc. .

"Life" might mean either the fact of being alive or the individual content of the life of a person.

"Live" might be the form with a short "i" - either the passive act or state that is implied by being alive (for any animal) or the conscious acts of forging one's direction and of enjoying oneself (for a person) - or the form with a long "i" - something that is happening now.

"Live" with a long "i" does not fit the question; there is no real connection between "life" and this word. (Even <the fact of being alive> and <the attribute of happening now> are not really related; what is striking about this pair is that they have something in common but are different kinds of concepts.)

Thus, we have two possible pairings of "live" and "life" - one in the sense of just an animal and one is the sense of a person; it is either <the fact of being alive> and <the pertinent process or phenomenon>… or <the individual content of the life of a person> and <the conscious acts of forging one's direction and of enjoying oneself>.

[I did some thinking and writing in here, and then deleted it; we are going to jump straight to my conclusion.]

The deciding factor is the word "examine"; it has much more in common with the active mental concept sense of "live" than it does the passive animal sense. Thus, it is "live" as in "the conscious acts of forging one's direction and of enjoying oneself" and "life" as in "the individual content of the life of a person".

Independently of that, the trick with this question [well, it tricked me, anyway] is that "life" is the name for the phenomenon of living… but "examine" requires an object to examine - an unspecified object. The resolution of this trick is that, regardless of that, there is a word for the phenomenon of examining - "examination" (not as in "test" but as in (for instance) medical examination [by a doctor]).

The answer, then, is: "Live is to life as examine is to examination."

(Of course, the converse of the above is that someone reading this answer would tend to think that "examination" was supposed to mean "test"; that is the usual meaning of the word.)

p.s. I hope this question was supposed to be difficult; if it was not, it was badly written.