parenthesis
/pəˈɹɛn.θə.sɪs/noun
parenthesis is spelled P-A-R-E-N-T-H-E-S-I-S. The wrong spelling people search most is paranthesis: about 300 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 1 in 21 of all searches for the word. Parenthesis is a noun meaning “A clause, phrase or word which is inserted (usually for explanation or amplification) into a passage which is…”. The plural of parenthesis is parentheses.
How many letters and syllables are in parenthesis?
| Letters | 11: P-A-R-E-N-T-H-E-S-I-S |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 4 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | about once in every 2 million words; the 45,363rd most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, paranthesis, about 300 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell parenthesis?
Parenthesis is spelled P-A-R-E-N-T-H-E-S-I-S. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 1 in 21 of the searches for parenthesis in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is parenthesis?
Parenthesis appears about once in every 2 million words in written English, the 45,363rd most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce parenthesis?
- /pəˈɹɛn.θə.sɪs/
Parenthesis has 4 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-parenthesis.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of parenthesis
- parentheses plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does parenthesis mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
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.
- 2
Either of a pair of brackets, especially (mainly US) round brackets, ( and ) (used to enclose parenthetical material in a text).
- 3
A digression; the use of such digressions.
- 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.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you abbreviate parenthesis?
Wiktionary records one abbreviation of parenthesis: par.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Parenthesis in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | parenthèse , parenthèses |
| German | Parenthese, Einschub , runde Klammer, Klammer |
| Portuguese | parêntese , parênteses |
| Spanish | paréntesis |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does parenthesis come from?
Learned borrowing from Late Latin parenthesis (“addition of a letter to a syllable in a word”), itself borrowed from Ancient Greek παρένθεσις (parénthesis, “insertion”). By surface analysis, par- + en- + thesis.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).