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Word of the day
for September 9
parenthesis n
  1. (countable) A clause, phrase, or word which is inserted into a grammatically complete passage of text for explanation or as an aside, and usually marked off with brackets, commas, or dashes.
    1. (generally, countable) An aside serving as an explanation; also, an afterthought.
    2. (rhetoric, uncountable) The making of asides or explanations in grammatically complete passages of text.
  2. (by extension, orthography, countable) Either of a pair of brackets, chiefly the round brackets "(" and ")" but occasionally also the square brackets "[" and "]", which are used together to enclose parenthetical material in a text.
    1. Either of a pair of curved lines or shapes resembling a round bracket.
    2. (logic, mathematics) Either of a pair of brackets used to clarify an expression by grouping terms affected by a common operator, or to enclose the components of a vector or the elements of a matrix.
  3. (figurative)
    1. (countable) An intervening event; an interlude, an interruption.
    2. (obsolete, uncountable) A departing or straying from the main activity or subject; deviation, digression; (countable) an instance of this; an irrelevant interruption.

To mark International Literacy Day on 8 September, which is recognized by UNESCO to highlight the importance of literacy to individuals, communities, and societies, we are featuring a series of punctuation marks and typographical symbols.

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Foreign word of the day  in Vietnamese
cửu vạn noun
  1. porter (literally, “nine of Myriads [in the Vietnamese card game tổ tôm]”)

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