parallelism

noun

par·​al·​lel·​ism ˈper-ə-ˌle-ˌli-zəm 

-lə-ˌli-,

ˈpa-rə-

1

: the quality or state of being parallel

the parallelism of architectural figures

2

: resemblance, correspondence

parallelism between obesity and hypertension

—H. M. Marvin

3

: repeated syntactical similarities introduced for rhetorical effect

biblical poetry relies largely on parallelism of lines

—E. P. Sanders

4

: a theory that mind and matter accompany one another but are not causally related

5

: the independent development of similar traits or features (as of body structure or behavior) in different species or lineages that have common ancestry and that typically occupy similar environments or ecological niches : parallel evolution

Synonyms

• alikeness
• community
• comparability
• correspondence
• likeness
• resemblance
• similarity
• similitude

Examples of parallelism in a Sentence

There is some degree of parallelism between the lives of the two women.

There is a certain parallelism in the development of the two technologies.

Recent Examples on the Web

That parallelism also exists in Escobedo’s nubbly façade, which resembles a coarse wool blanket, woven to look at once ancient and modern, organic and geometric. —Justin Davidson, Curbed, 10 Dec. 2024

The events are routed between units and across chips asynchronously, meaning there is no central clock coordinating their movements—which can allow for massive parallelism. —IEEE Spectrum, 8 May 2024

In-flight sequence batching, KV Cache optimizations, attention optimizations, multi-GPU parallelism, and FP8 quantization. —Karl Freund, Forbes, 27 Mar. 2024

To begin with Henry Sugar and end with Poison, which debuts last, is to grapple with an unsettling parallelism. —Vulture, 29 Sep. 2023

Word History

First Known Use

1610, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Phrases Containing parallelism

• psychophysical parallelism

Kids Definition

parallelism

noun

par·​al·​lel·​ism ˈpar-ə-ˌlel-ˌiz-əm 

: the quality or state of being parallel

especially : similarity of construction of word groups especially for effect or rhythm

Medical Definition

parallelism

noun

par·​al·​lel·​ism ˈpar-ə-ˌlel-ˌiz-əm, -ləl- 

: a philosophical or psychological doctrine that there is a one-to-one correspondence between events in the mind and events in the brain but that the two sets of events exist without interacting in a causal way

called also psychophysical parallelism