parenthesis

From Late Latin parenthesis (“addition of a letter to a syllable in a word”), from Ancient Greek παρένθεσις (parénthesis), from παρεντίθημι (parentíthēmi, “I put in beside, mix up”), from παρά (pará, “beside”) + ἐν (en, “in”) + τίθημι (títhēmi, “put, place”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁- (“to put, to do”).

• IPA^(key): /pəˈɹɛnθəsɪs/

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parenthesis (countable and uncountable, plural parentheses)

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.
2. Either of a pair of brackets, especially round brackets, ( and ) (used to enclose parenthetical material in a text).
   • 1824, J. Johnson, Typographia:

     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.

   • 1842, F. Francillon, An Essay on Punctuation, p. 9:

     Whoever introduced the several points, it seems that a full-point, a point called come, answering to our colon-point, a point called virgil answering to our comma-point, the parenthesis-points and interrogative-point, were used at the close of the fourteenth, or beginning of the fifteenth century.

3. (rhetoric) A digression; the use of such digressions.
   • 2009, Up in the air:

     Ryan Bingham: I thought I was a part of your life. Alex Goran: I thought we signed up for the same thing... I thought our relationship was perfectly clear. You are an escape. You're a break from our normal lives. You're a parenthesis. Ryan Bingham: I'm a parenthesis?

4. (mathematics, logic) 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.

• (clause, phrase or word): parenthetical expression
• (brackets): round bracket; parenthesis-point (obsolete)
• paren (abbreviation, for the meaning "round bracket")
• See also Thesaurus:bracket

• parenthesis-point
• parenthetic, parenthetical
• parenthesise, parenthesize

• hen's parties, interphases, preanthesis