English Easy Learning GrammarBrackets ( )Brackets (also called parentheses) are used to enclose a word or words which can beleft out and still leave a meaningful sentence. The wooded area (see ... Read more
parenthesis in British English
(pəˈrɛnθɪsɪs)
nounWord forms: plural-ses (-ˌsiːz)
1.
a phrase, often explanatory or qualifying, inserted into a passage with which it is not grammatically connected, and marked off by brackets, dashes, etc
2. Also called: bracket
either of a pair of characters, (), used to enclose such a phrase or as a sign ofaggregation in mathematical or logical expressions
3.
an intervening occurrence; interlude; interval
4. in parenthesis
Derived forms
parenthetic (ˌpærənˈθɛtɪk) or parenthetical (ˌparenˈthetical)
adjective
parenthetically (ˌparenˈthetically)
adverb
Word origin
C16: via Late Latin from Greek: something placed in besides, from parentithenai, from para-1 + en-2 + tithenai to put
Examples of 'parentheses' in a sentence
parentheses
She wore it loose, a set of dark parentheses around her heart-shaped face.
Tapply, William G FOLLOW THE SHARKS
She would plunge into a vast series of parentheses and never come out.
O'Brian, Patrick TESTIMONIES
The reader easily loses track among the parentheses.
Times, Sunday Times (2015)
Parentheses (which confuse the ear) are banished.
Times, Sunday Times (2018)
It occasionally resorts to script-type parentheses, such as 'scream', or 'gasping'.
Times, Sunday Times (2018)
More importantly, when it comes to his parentheses, he's plain wrong.
Times, Sunday Times (2008)
Sentences straggle, parentheses wander off in all directions, clarity vanishes beneath an aerosol-mist of verbiage.
Times, Sunday Times (2009)
At dinner parties he struggles to keep up with those guests 'capable of enclosing linguistic brackets inside conversational parentheses'.
The Times Literary Supplement (2014)
And those annoying 'parentheses' lines?
Times, Sunday Times (2016)
When she wants to inject some humour, she will allude to a passage from a work of reference in parentheses.