Parallelism
noun
noun ·5 syllables ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 The state or condition of being parallel; agreement in direction, tendency, or character. countable, uncountable
- 2 similarity by virtue of corresponding wordnet
- 3 The state of being in agreement or similarity; resemblance, correspondence, analogy. countable, uncountable
"Plutarch (c. AD 46-120), in his Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, traced a parallelism between the most eminent men of the two countries."
- 4 A parallel position; the relation of parallels. countable, uncountable
- 5 The juxtaposition of two or more identical or equivalent syntactic constructions, especially those expressing the same sentiment with slight modifications, introduced for rhetorical effect. countable, rhetoric, uncountable
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- 6 The doctrine that matter and mind do not causally interact but that physiological events in the brain or body nonetheless occur simultaneously with matching events in the mind. countable, uncountable
- 7 In antitrust law, the practice of competitors of raising prices by roughly the same amount at roughly the same time, without engaging in a formal agreement to do so. countable, uncountable
- 8 Similarity of features between two species resulting from their having taken similar evolutionary paths following their initial divergence from a common ancestor. countable, uncountable
- 9 The use of parallel methods in hardware or software, so that several tasks can be performed at the same time. countable, uncountable
Example
More examples"The undeniable parallelism between US and British imperialist ambitions suggests that London should seriously consider the proposition of becoming an American state."
Etymology
From parallel + -ism and from Late Latin parallelismus.
Related phrases
More for "parallelism"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.