I am mainly familiar with "parse" as the term pertains to language. In addition to spoken languages, one also parses computer languages. You can think of "parsing a sentence" as "taking it apart" or as "putting it together". There is not all that much difference because either way you look at it, it is an analysis of the grammatical structure. I prefer to think of "parsing" as "putting together" because when working with computer languages, that is the agreed meaning. A "compiler" for a computer language examines code written by a programmer and tries to turn it into machine code that a computer can run. To do this, the compiler (which itself is computer code) uses a "grammar" that identifies key words that serve particular functions. Based on those key words and the order in which things are stated, it "parses" what the programmer wrote into a structure that can be run. To parse an English sentence, you identify which words act as verbs and what their subjects or objects are. You identify the nouns, adjectives, and so forth. You identify the clauses, and most importantly, you identify what modifies what, so you know how each part of the sentence is related to the others. You can think of it as putting the sentence together or tearing it apart - that's up to you. More generally, "parsing" refers to process of piecing together information into a coherent whole that can be understood.