parentheses

Noun

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.
   • How expressive this little parenthesis: "Sakuntalâ makes a chiding gesture with her finger"!1903, Karl Mantzius, A History of Theatrical Art in Ancient and Modern Times, page 86

   Synonyms:

   parentheme

2. Either of a pair of brackets, especially (mainly US) round brackets, ( and ) (used to enclose parenthetical material in a text).
   • 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...1824, John Johnson, Typographia, Or the Printer's Instructor, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green

   Synonyms:

   round bracket, parenthesis-point

3. (rhetoric) A digression; the use of such digressions.
   • 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...1837, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XV, in Ethel Churchill: Or, The Two Brides. […], volume II, London: Henry Colburn, […], →OCLC, page 113
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.

   Synonyms:

   parathesis, apposition