parenthesis

n., pl. -ses (-sēz').

1. Either or both of the upright curved lines, ( ), used to mark off explanatory or qualifying remarks in writing or printing or enclose a sum, product, or other expression considered or treated as a collective entity in a mathematical operation.
2. 1. A qualifying or amplifying word, phrase, or sentence inserted within written matter in such a way as to be independent of the surrounding grammatical structure.
   2. A comment departing from the theme of discourse; a digression.
3. An interruption of continuity; an interval: “This is one of the things I wasn't prepared for—the amount of unfilled time, the long parentheses of nothing” (Margaret Atwood).

[Late Latin, insertion of a letter or syllable in a word, from Greek, from parentithenai, to insert : para-, beside; see para–¹ + en-, in + tithenai, to put.]

The left parenthesis "(" and right parenthesis ")" are used to delineate one expression from another. For example, in the query list for size="34" and (color = "red" or color ="green"), parentheses group the ORs together so they are a distinct entity from the AND.

In programming, parentheses are used to surround input parameters of a function call. For example, in C, the string compare statement strnicmp (itemA, itemB, 10) uses parentheses to group the ITEMA, ITEMB and 10 values handed over to the function.

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noun

An instance of digressing: aside, deviation, digression, divagation, divergence, divergency, excursion, excursus, irrelevancy, tangent. See approach/retreat.

Punctuation marks — ( ) — used to separate elements in a sentence. Parentheses subordinate (see subordination) the material within them so that readers save most of their attention for the rest of the sentence: “Aunt Sarah (who is really my mother's cousin) will be visiting next week.”

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Common misspelling(s) of parenthesis

• paranthesis

Dansk (Danish)
n. - parentes, mellemspil

Nederlands (Dutch)
ronde haakjes, tussenzin, pauze

Français (French)
n. - parenthèse

Deutsch (German)
n. - Klammer, Einschub

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - παρένθεση

Italiano (Italian)
parentesi

Português (Portuguese)
n. - parênteses (m pl), intervalo (m), divagação (f)

Русский (Russian)
вводное слово/предложение, круглая скобка

Español (Spanish)
n. - paréntesis

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - parentes

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
括弧, 附带, 插入语

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 括弧, 附帶, 插入語

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 삽입구, 괄호 [ ( ) ], 삽화

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 括弧, 余談

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) فترة فاصله, هلال أو هلالان, جمله معترضه توضع بين قوسين أو فاصلتين, قوسان اعتراضيانع‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮סוגריים, הסגר (בתחביר), מאמר מוסגר‬

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