Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use parallel in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective, adverb, noun

Parallel means equally distant from one another at all points. Example: “The horizontal lines on my notebook paper are parallel.”

Examples of parallel by meaning

adjectiveEqually distant from one another at all points.

  • The horizontal lines on my notebook paper are parallel.
  • the instrument held with its plane roughly parallel to the equinoctial or celestial equato1911, William Robert Martin, 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Navigation

adjectiveHaving the same overall direction; the comparison is indicated with "to".

  • The two railway lines are parallel.

adjectiveInvolving the processing of multiple tasks at the same time.

  • a parallel algorithm

adjectiveAnalogous, similar, comparable.

  • the parallel lives of two citizens
  • In those days she had admired his pluralistic openness of mind, and struggled, in her kitchen, towards a parallel eclecticism, learning to cook the dosas and uttapams of South India as well as the soft meatballs of Kashmir.1988, Salman Rushdie, chapter V, in The Satanic Verses, page 255

adverbWith a parallel relationship.

  • The road runs parallel to the canal.

nounA line of latitude.

  • The 31st parallel passes through the center of my town.

nounA comparison made; elaborate tracing of similarity.

  • Johnson's parallel between Dryden and Pope

verbOf a path etc: To be parallel to something else.

  • Archaic covered bridges lingered fearsomely out of the past in pockets of the hills, and the half-abandoned railway track paralleling the river seemed to exhale a nebulously visible air of desolation.1931, H. P. Lovecraft, chapter 6, in The Whisperer in Darkness
  • Racing on, we parallel the M5 doing 95mph, according to the app on my smartphone.2020 December 2, Paul Bigland, “My weirdest and wackiest Rover yet”, in Rail, page 66

More sentences with parallel

  • The flutter in this room is from the hard, parallel walls.From the entry flutter
  • She's scored very highly with the parallel bars; let's see how she does with the horse.From the entry horse
  • The total resistance of two resistors connected in parallel is easily calculated using a simple formula.From the entry in parallel
  • Many societies forbid marriage between parallel cousins, but encourage marriage between cross-cousins or second cross-cousins.From the entry cross-cousin
  • In dysconjugate gaze, the eyes do not turn in parallel to follow an object as they should.From the entry dysconjugate
  • Parallel parking can be a difficult maneuver.From the entry maneuver
  • The thick-bedded dolostone's straticulate character was brought out as fine etched parallel grooves on the broken surfaces by weathering.From the entry straticulate
  • In Euclidean geometry, nonintersecting lines are always parallel.From the entry nonintersecting
  • Translations to all five languages were done in parallel.From the entry in parallel
  • E.g., orthostyle is a series of columns in architecture, an ortholinear keyboard has the keys aligned in straight columns, an orthographic projection has its rays parallel.From the entry ortho-
  • Officials from the NLD and other factions set up a parallel administration-in-exile called the National Unity Government.2025 July 18, Timothy McLaughlin, “A Rebel Army Is Building a Rare-Earth Empire on China's Border. The Kachin Independence Organization…. From the entry NLD
  • The parallel market in plants is growing and rare cacti are in high demand.2025 March 10, Isabella Kaminski, “A cacti-smuggling case with a prickly end: the novel way courts are making poachers pay”, in The…. From the entry parallel market
  • There were, of course, many Twitters existing in parallel: Politics Twitter, Sports Twitter, Black Twitter, Weird Twitter.2023 July 10, James Poniewozik, “The Twitter Watch Party Is Over”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 10 Jul 2023. From the entry twitter
  • The last configuration has a wire connected in parallel with a battery.2020, Moamar Sayed-Mouchaweh, Artificial Intelligence Techniques for a Scalable Energy Transition, page 284. From the entry uncharge
  • Large circuits are made of combinations of smaller series and parallel circuits.2017 October, “Snap Circuits Light”, in Snap Circuits, Elenco, page 9. From the entry circuit
  • Natureculture’s visibility in the primatological literature parallels the emergence and proliferation of studies referred to asethnoprimatology.2017, Nicholas Malone, Kathryn Ovenden, “Natureculture”, in Agustín Fuentes, editor, The International Encyclopedia of Primatology, John…. From the entry natureculture
  • We raise ten-pound rubber rifles and hold them parallel to the ground.2016, Eric Fair, Consequence, page 28. From the entry on fire
  • Note how the zygophores are tightly appressed parallel to each other while fusing to form the progametangia.2015 July 17, “Zygomycetes in Vesicular Basanites from Vesteris Seamount, Greenland Basin – A New Type of Cryptoendolithic Fungi”, in PLOS…. From the entry progametangia
  • In parallel, conditional and brain-specific VDR mutations have to be identified to assess their neurophenotypes.2015 August 17, Anindita Banerjee et al., “Vitamin D and Alzheimer's Disease: Neurocognition to Therapeutics”, in International Journal of…. From the entry neurophenotypes
  • VHDL can also be used as a general purpose parallel programming language.2014 October 10, Wikipedia contributors, “VHDL”, in English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, revision 629049384. From the entry VHDL
  • So much for unretiring the printer in the attic that connects through what's called a parallel port.2014, Edward C. Baig, Macs For Dummies. From the entry unretire
  • The mixture is worked to give numerous fine, parallel threads, rather like a skein of silk.2014, Alan Davidson, Tom Jaine, The Oxford Companion to Food, 3rd edition, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 136. From the entry saray helva
  • Absence of parallel movement of the eyes indicates disconjugate gaze disturbance (Figure 12.8).2014, Erwin B Montgomery, Intraoperative Neurophysiological Monitoring for Deep Brain Stimulation, →ISBN. From the entry disconjugate
  • The development of water reticulation occurred in parallel with street work — forming, kerbing, channelling and bitumening.2013, Janice Cooper, Crossing the Divide: A History of Alpha and Jericho Districts, Boolarong Press, →ISBN, page 176. From the entry bitumen
  • These aspects of emotion—expressive behavior, physiological process—have parallels in the emotionlike behaviors of other species.2013, Mark Schaller, Jeffry A. Simpson, Douglas T. Kenrick, Evolution and Social Psychology, page 133. From the entry emotionlike
  • Sometimes, there are overlong excurses in drawing out parallels with other Victorians.2013 November 29, Geoffrey Rowell, “John Henry [Newman]’s relations”, in Church Times, London, →ISSN, →OCLC, Christmas book supplement…. From the entry excurse
  • Followers of pseudosciences such as astrology often draw spurious parallels between their beliefs and established science.2012, The Guardian, (headline), 7 Feb 2012. From the entry astrology
  • These correspond to an indirected parallel write and an indirected parallel read operation respectively.2012, Geerd-R. Hoffmann, Dimitris K. Maretis, The Dawn of Massively Parallel Processing in Meteorology. From the entry indirect
  • It was in no way parallel to a disinheritable natural son, who might mature badly.2012, Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, Keys to Galatians: Collected Essays, page 108. From the entry disinheritable

Meaning of parallel

  1. adjective Equally distant from one another at all points.
  2. adjective Having the same overall direction; the comparison is indicated with "to".
  3. adjective Either not intersecting, or coinciding.

Full definition of parallel

Questions about parallel in a sentence

How do you use parallel in a sentence?
Parallel is used as an adjective, adverb and noun. For example: “The horizontal lines on my notebook paper are parallel.”
What is a short sentence with parallel?
“a parallel algorithm”
What does parallel mean?
Parallel means equally distant from one another at all points.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: parallel (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use parallel in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/parallel. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.