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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

parenthesis.

A clause, phrase or word which is inserted (usually for explanation or amplification) into a passage which is already grammatically complete, and usually marked off with brackets, commas or dashes.

11 characters4 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/pəˈɹɛn.θə.sɪs/
  1. A clause, phrase or word which is inserted (usually for explanation or amplification) into a passage which is already grammatically complete, and usually marked off with brackets, commas or dashes.

    countable · uncountable
  2. Either of a pair of brackets, especially (mainly US) round brackets, ( and ) (used to enclose parenthetical material in a text).

    countable · uncountable
  3. A digression; the use of such digressions.

    countable · rhetoric · uncountable
  4. Such brackets as used to clarify expressions by grouping those terms affected by a common operator, or to enclose the components of a vector or the elements of a matrix.

    countable · uncountable
Where this word comes from

Learned borrowing from Late Latin parenthesis (“addition of a letter to a syllable in a word”), itself borrowed from Ancient Greek παρένθεσις (parénthesis, “insertion”). By surface analysis, par- + en- + thesis.

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parenthesis studioparenthesis workshello, parenthesis

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.