parenthesis

Noun

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,...
   • Whoever introduced the several points, it seems that a full-point, a point called come, answering to our colon-point, a point called virgil answering to our comma-point, the parenthesis-points and interrogative-point,...
   • [T]he present research also made an effort to approach a greater accuracy in presenting the original sources of borrowed words. This was achieved by presenting etymons from Hindustani in the Devanagari script followed...
3. 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...
   • Ryan Bingham (George Clooney): I thought I was a part of your life. Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga): I thought we signed up for the same thing[…] I thought our relationship was perfectly clear. You are an escape. You're a...
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.