The phrase “chemical analysis” has historically had two meanings: first, the long-standing, traditional definition of decomposing substances into their simpler, possibly ultimate, components and, second, the development of methods for identifying the proximate components contained in unknown mixtures and materials. The second meaning straddles the elusive border between theoretical and applied chemistry and has been present since antiquity. However, by the mid-nineteenth century, this second meaning of “chemical analysis” had become established as a new area of chemistry called “analytical chemistry.” Based on searches of key phrases using Google Ngrams and within digital texts, this essay traces the appearance of key concepts in analytical chemistry in German textbooks between the late eighteenth century and the appearance of Karl Fresenius’ Zeitschrift für analytische Chemie in 1862. It argues that analytical chemistry had become a subdiscipline by the middle of the nineteenth century and has the characteristics of a second-order activity, characterized by its focus on devising trustworthy and reliable techniques for the identification of unknown substances.