parenthesis vs semicolon

parenthesis

noun
  • A clause, phrase or word which is inserted (usually for explanation or amplification) into a passage which is already grammatically complete, and usually marked off with brackets, commas or dashes. 

  • Such brackets as used to clarify expressions by grouping those terms affected by a common operator, or to enclose the components of a vector or the elements of a matrix. 

  • Either of a pair of brackets, especially round brackets, ( and ) (used to enclose parenthetical material in a text). 

  • A digression; the use of such digressions. 

semicolon

noun
  • The punctuation mark ;. 

How often have the words parenthesis and semicolon occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )