para
para Lexical Profile
para Game Scores & Validity
• noun
British An informal shortening of paragraph, used especially in editing, journalism, and legal or administrative documents.
"Please cut the final two paras of the draft article so that it fits neatly on the front page."
American An informal shortening of paraprofessional, especially an educational assistant who supports a certified teacher or works with special-needs students in a classroom.
"The school district hired an experienced para to assist the third-grade teacher with individualized reading instruction."
British An informal shortening of paratrooper, referring to a soldier trained to parachute from aircraft into an operation zone.
"During the historical reenactment, a former para explained how airborne units prepared their equipment before a jump."
A former small monetary unit and coin of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, and Yugoslavia, equal to one fortieth of a kurus or one hundredth of a Yugoslav dinar.
"The museum's numismatic collection features several nineteenth-century silver para coins minted in Constantinople."
In obstetrics, a woman who has given birth one or more times to an infant or fetus that reached the stage of viability, often used with a numerical designation.
"The patient's prenatal chart recorded her obstetric history as gravida two, para one."
• adjective
Relating to or denoting a chemical substitution pattern in a benzene ring in which two substituent groups occupy directly opposite positions (1 and 4).
"The laboratory synthesis yielded primarily the para isomer rather than the ortho variant."
• Rhymes for para
Word Origin & Etymology
As a noun, 'para' represents independent informal clippings of words such as 'paragraph', 'paratrooper', and 'paraprofessional'. The currency sense derives from Turkish 'para', ultimately from Persian 'pārah' meaning 'piece' or 'fragment', while the chemical adjective derives from Ancient Greek 'para-' meaning 'beside' or 'opposite'.