The distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments was first made by Immanuel Kant in the introduction to his Critique of Pure Reason. According to him, all judgments could be exhaustively divided into these two kinds. The subject of both kinds of judgment was taken to be some thing or things, not concepts. Synthetic judgments are informative; they tell something about the subject by connecting or synthesizing two different concepts under which the subject is subsumed. Analytic judgments are uninformative; they serve merely to elucidate or analyze the concept under which the subject falls. There is a prima facie difficulty as to how a judgment can be simultaneously about an object, uninformative in relation to it, and explicative of the concepts involved, but this question will be examined later.

Kant associated this distinction with the distinction between a priori and a posteriori judgments...