It's usually referred to as one leg of the circuit.
The current that flows from and back to the power supply in a parallel circuit is called branch current. Each branch in a parallel circuit has its own current flow that combines to form the total current drawn from the power supply.
Simple parts of a circuit are switches, light bulb, battery and connecting wires.
Parallel circuit
A parallel branch is a current path. In general, current follows paths, voltage drops across components, and resistance is the voltage divided by current of specific circuit elements.
The current that flows from and back to the power supply in a parallel circuit is called the total current. It splits into different branches based on the resistance of each branch but remains constant throughout the circuit.
Generally, a circuit with multiple paths is called "parallel" because of the structure of the wiring involved. Parallel circuits have identical voltage on all paths, while current through each path is variable; whereas series circuits, having only one path, has constant current, but variable voltage.
parallel circuit
A series/parallel circuit.
All the branch circuits in your house are parallel. They have a constant voltage applied to any device plugged into an outlet. If you thought about an analogy for a parallel circuit, imagine that the rails on each side of rungs represented the hot and neutral wires of a typical household branch circuit. The rungs would be the loads connected in parallel. Each "load" draws the current needed to operate the specific device. The sum of all the currents for the "loads" is equal to the total current being supplied through the circuit.
parallel
A circuit that has more than one path for the current to flow is a parallel circuit. The circuit must have two or more paths to be considered parallel. A circuit that has only one current path through multiple components is a series circuit.
Series - parallel circut