parallel lives
n · noun
Simple meaning
The a series of 48 biographies of famous men written by the Greco-Roman philosopher, historian, and Apollonian priest Plutarch.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
pehruhluhlivzSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈpɛɹəlɛlɪvz
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
n
The (Bíoi Parállēloi; ) a series of 48 biographies of famous men written by the Greco-Roman philosopher, historian, and Apollonian priest Plutarch, probably at the beginning of the second century.
A 1994 American made-for-television mystery-drama film written, directed and produced by Linda Yellen which returns some actors and similar patterns of Yellen's previous work, Chantilly Lace.
A 2009 album by the Japanese rock band Nothing's Carved in Stone released on May 6, 2009.
noun
A collection of biographies of famous pairs of Greeks and Romans written by Plutarch; used by Shakespeare in writing some of his plays
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: The (Bíoi Parállēloi; ) a series of 48 biographies of famous men written by the Greco-Roman philosopher, historian, and Apollonian priest Plutarch, probably at the beginning of the second century.
Used this way, parallel lives is a specialist word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in technical or specialist writing contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Specialist/technical
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Specialized
- Connotation
- Clinical and technical
- Usage feel
- Technical and specialized
Where it naturally appears
- Technical/specialist writing
Usage note
In general conversation this sense usually needs explaining — outside its field, people reach for a plainer word.
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.