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Parenthesis

//pəˈɹɛnθəsɪs// noun

Definitions

Noun
  1. 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

    "How expressive this little parenthesis: "Sakuntalâ makes a chiding gesture with her finger"!"

  2. 2
    a message that departs from the main subject wordnet
  3. 3
    Either of a pair of brackets, especially (mainly US) round brackets, ( and ) (used to enclose parenthetical material in a text). countable, uncountable

    "There be five manner of points and divisions most used among cunning men; the which if they be well used, make the sentence very light and easy to be understood, both to the reader and hearer: and they be these, virgil,—come,—parenthesis,—plain point,—interrogative[…] it is a slender stroke leaning forward, betokening a little short rest, without any perfectness yet of sentence."

  4. 4
    either of two punctuation marks ‘(’ or ‘)’ used to enclose textual material wordnet
  5. 5
    A digression; the use of such digressions. countable, rhetoric, uncountable

    "Mr. Trevanion was one of those talkers, who are too much engrossed with their own subject matter to have much attention to bestow elsewhere; with them silence is attention. Ethel's wandering eye, and lip, tremulous with its effort to speak, would never have attracted his notice. To his utter astonishment, she interrupted a parenthesis, as brilliant as the rocket which it depicted, by saying,— "Mr. Trevanion, I do not know what you will think of my boldness, but I must speak to you.""

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  1. 6
    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

Etymology

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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