merits of Lisp vs Python

[David Golden]

Actually, in English, "parenthesis" means the bit in between the
brackets.

The various kinds of brackets (amongst other punctuation marks
including, in most english texts, commas) *demarcate* parentheses.

Wikipedia's "Parenthesis (rhetoric)" is, at time of writing, the correct
British English definition, citing the OED:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parenthesis_%28rhetoric%29

"An explanatory or qualifying word, clause, or sentence inserted into a
passage with which it has not necessarily any grammatical connection,
and from which it is usually marked off by round or square brackets,
dashes, or commas"

The use of round brackets to demarcate parentheses in america eventually
somehow led to round brackets themselves being called parentheses in
america, but that usage still makes little sense to many native
speakers of British (or Hiberno-) English outside the computing field.

It's like calling a quotation mark a "quote" instead of a "quotation
mark".  And lo, guess who does that too...

Calling round brackets "parenthesis marks" would be acceptable but
perhaps ambiguous in British English, probably needing further
qualification like "double quotation mark", "single quotation mark".