parenthesis
part of speech
noun (a parenthesis, parentheses)
meaning for a pupil
1) (punctuation) A word, phrase or sentence put into another sentence as extra information, marked by brackets, commas or dashes. tree →
2) (US) One of the round brackets ( ). tree →
3) (maths) Round brackets that show which part of a calculation to do first. tree →
sense in the lessons
In grammar lessons (UK Key Stage 2), pupils learn parenthesis: extra information marked by brackets, dashes or commas, as in «My dog (who is very old) sleeps a lot». In maths, operations inside parentheses are done first (BIDMAS, BODMAS, PEMDAS). Phrases: «in parentheses», «use parenthesis», «brackets for parenthesis».
examples
- My cat, who is very lazy, sleeps all day — this is parenthesis with commas. tree →
- Put extra information in parentheses (like this). tree →
- In maths, work out the parentheses first: (3 + 4) × 2 = 14. tree →
- Use dashes for parenthesis — they make it stand out. tree →
- The teacher asked us to add a parenthesis to our sentence. tree →
- In the US, ( ) are called parentheses; in the UK they are usually «brackets». tree →
note
Plural «parentheses» (-is → -es, like crisis/crises). Adjective «parenthetical». Maths: (2 + 3) × 4 = 20 but 2 + 3 × 4 = 14 — brackets change the answer. Trap: in UK school grammar «parenthesis» means the extra phrase itself; in US use it often means the bracket marks.
In the corpora
- Parenthesis is extra information added to a sentence; the sentence still makes sense if you take it out.
- Brackets, a pair of dashes, or a pair of commas can all mark parenthesis.
Trees and pragmatics
Every meaning and example of «parenthesis» parsed by Mova, each sentence with its dependency tree and frames.