Definition:
In a sentence, a balanced arrangement of two roughly equal parts: a form of parallelism.
By convention, items in a paired construction appear in parallel grammatical form: a noun phrase is paired with another noun phrase, an -ing form with another -ing form, and so on. Failure to express such items in similar grammatical form is called faulty parallelism.
See also:
- Balanced Sentence
- Antithesis
- Chiasmus
- Coordinating Conjunctions
- Coordinating Words, Phrases, and Clauses
- Coordination
- A Definition of a Gentleman, by John Henry Newman
- Parallel Structure
Examples and Observations:
- "I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail."
(William Faulkner, Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech, Dec. 10, 1950) - "Certainty of death, small chance of success: what are we waiting for?"
(John Rhys-Davies as Gimli in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2003) - "So let us begin anew--remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate."
(President John Kennedy, Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1961) - "To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds."
(President Barack Obama, Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 2009) - "One might ponder the melancholy question whether it does take misfortune and great tension, national agitation and even calamity, to arouse and inspire film-makers to dare radical leaps ahead and explode devastating expressions."
(Bosley Crowther, The Great Films: Fifty Golden Years of Motion Pictures. Putnam, 1971)
