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paragraph

nounverbattested in dialogue

  • United States//ˈpæɹəɡɹæf//
  • Australia//ˈpæɹəɡɹɑːf//
  • //ˈpɛɹəɡɹæf//
  • //ˈpaɹəɡɹaf//

A passage in text that starts on a new line, the first line sometimes being indented, and usually marks a change of topic.

noun

  1. 1

    A passage in text that starts on a new line, the first line sometimes being indented, and usually marks a change of topic.

    opening paragraph

    final paragraph

    paragraph heading

    Divide the writing into paragraphs.

  2. 2

    A mark or note set in the margin to call attention to something in the text, such as a change of subject.

  3. 3

    A brief article, notice, or announcement, as in a newspaper.

    Much of its earliest foreign news came direct from the minister, and not seldom in his own hand. Louis XIII. took a keen, perhaps a somewhat childish, interest in the progress of the infant Gazette, and was a frequent contributor, now and then taking his little paragraphs to the printing office himself, and seeing them put into type.

  4. 4

    An offset of 16 bytes in Intel memory architectures.

Etymology

From Middle English paragraf, from Middle French paragraphe from Latin paragraphus (“sign for start of a new section of discourse”), from Ancient Greek παράγραφος (parágraphos), from παρά (pará, “beside”) and γράφω (gráphō, “to write”). Doublet of paragraphos.

verb

  1. 1

    To sort text into paragraphs.

  2. 2

    To publish a brief article, notice, or announcement, as in a newspaper.

Forms

plural
paragraphs
past tense
paragraphed
past participle
paragraphed
present participle
paragraphing
third person singular
paragraphs
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).