MEANING
1. A supplementary remark inserted into a sentence or passage without becoming its main thread.
2. Either of the two curved punctuation marks used to enclose supplementary material.
Use it for
identifying an aside within a narrator’s argument; describing supplementary material that interrupts a sentence; discussing how a writer qualifies a statement indirectlyDistinguishes supplementary material from the punctuation used to set it off, useful in close reading and scholarly editing. Writing functions: Analysis / Interpretation, Interpretation.
Words that belong together
- a parenthesis in the narrative
- add in parenthesis
- an explanatory parenthesis
On the page
The parenthesis quietly qualifies the certainty of the preceding claim.
What appears to be a casual parenthesis introduces the narrator’s central doubt.
The transcription supplies a closing parenthesis where the manuscript’s line breaks off.
The edition keeps the date in parentheses and the editor’s addition in square brackets.
Word forms
- Base
- parenthesis
Usage notes
Count noun: parenthesis; plural parentheses. The singular can name one mark or an inserted aside; the pair of marks is parentheses. Register: neutral. Commonness: moderately common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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