comma
English
a comma butterfly (Polygonia c-album)
Alternative forms
- come (obsolete)
Etymology
From Latin comma, from Ancient Greek κόμμα (kómma), from κόπτω (kóptō, “I cut”).
Pronunciation
- (UK) enPR: kŏm'ə, IPA(key): /ˈkɒm.ə/
- (US) enPR: kŏm'-ə, IPA(key): /ˈkɑm.ə/
Audio (US) (file) - Rhymes: -ɒmə
Noun
comma (plural commas or commata)
- (typography) The punctuation mark ⟨,⟩ used to indicate a set of parts of a sentence or between elements of a list.
- Synonyms: scratch comma, virgule, (in its obsolete form as a slash) virgula, (in its obsolete form as a middot) come, (obsolete) comma-point
- Hyponyms: comma of Didymus, inverted comma, Oxford comma, serial comma, syntonic comma
- 1828, Richard Thomson, Illustrations of the History of Great Britain, Vol. II, pp. 145–6:
- No points were used by the ancient printers, excepting the colon and the period; but, after some time, a short oblique stroke, called a virgil, was introduced, which answered to the modern comma. In the fifteenth century this punctuation was improved by the famous Aldus Manutius with the typographical art in general; when he gave a better shape to the comma, added the semicolon, and assigned to the former points more proper places.
- (Romanian typography) A similar-looking subscript diacritical mark.
- (entomology) Any of various nymphalid butterflies of the genus Polygonia, having a comma-shaped white mark on the underwings, especially Polygonia c-album and Polygonia c-aureum of North Africa, Europe, and Asia.
- 2004, Scott Shalaway, “Close-ups”, in Butterflies in the Backyard, Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, →ISBN, page 18:
- Commas (Polygonia comma) and Question Marks (Polygonia interrogationis) occur from the Gulf Coast to Canada and west to the Rockies. [...] Question Marks and Commas are handsome butterflies with burnt orange and black markings. [...] On the underside of each hind wing of the Comma is a small, distinctive silver hook that resembles a comma.
- 2013, Ann Simpson; Rob Simpson, “Butterflies and Moths”, in Nature Guide to Shenandoah National Park (Falcon Pocket Guide), Guilford, Conn.; Helena, Mont.: Falcon Guides, Globe Pequot Press, →ISBN, page 91:
- Other members of this genus that are frequently encountered in the park are the eastern comma (P. comma) and question mark (P. interrogationis).
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- (music) A difference in the calculation of nearly identical intervals by different ways.
- (genetics) A delimiting marker between items in a genetic sequence.
- (rhetoric) In Ancient Greek rhetoric, a short clause, something less than a colon, originally denoted by comma marks. In antiquity it was defined as a combination of words having no more than eight syllables in all. It was later applied to longer phrases, e.g. the Johannine comma.
- (figurative) A brief interval.
Derived terms
punctuation mark
- comma bacillus
- comma category
- commaless
- comma-point
- comma queen
- comma splice
- dun comma
- fat comma
- Harvard comma
- high comma
- ideographic comma
- scratch-comma
Translations
punctuation mark ','
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butterfly
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- The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked
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Verb
comma (third-person singular simple present commas, present participle commaing, simple past and past participle commaed)
- (rare, transitive) To place a comma or commas within text; to follow, precede, or surround a portion of text with commas.
Translations
to place a comma
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See also
Punctuation
- apostrophe ( ' ) ( ’ )
- curly brackets or braces (US) ( { } )
- square brackets or brackets (US) ( [ ] )
- colon ( : )
- comma ( , )
- dashes ( ‒ ) ( – ) ( — ) ( ― )
- ellipsis ( … )
- exclamation mark ( ! )
- fraction slash ( ⁄ )
- guillemets ( « » ) ( ‹ › )
- hyphen ( - ) ( ‐ )
- interpunct ( · )
- interrobang (rare) ( ‽ )
- brackets or parentheses (US, Canada) ( ( ) )
- full stop or period (US, Canada) ( . )
- question mark ( ? )
- quotation marks (formal) ( ‘ ’ ‚ ) ( “ ” „ )
- quotation marks (informal, computing) ( " ) ( ' )
- semicolon ( ; )
- slash or stroke (UK) ( / )
- space ( )
Further reading
comma on Wikipedia.Wikipedia - Comma (punctuation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
- Comma (butterfly) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
French
Pronunciation
Audio (file) - Homophones: commas, commât
Verb
comma
- third-person singular past historic of commer
Italian
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /ˈkɔm.ma/
- Rhymes: -ɔmma
- Hyphenation: còm‧ma
Noun
comma m (plural commi)
- (law) subsection, subparagraph
- ll secondo comma dell'articolo 3
- the second subparagraph of article 3
- (music) comma
Latin
Etymology
From the Ancient Greek κόμμα (kómma), from κόπτω (kóptō, “I cut”).
Pronunciation
- (Classical) IPA(key): /ˈkom.ma/, [ˈkɔmːä]
- (Ecclesiastical) IPA(key): /ˈkom.ma/, [ˈkɔmːä]
Noun
comma n (genitive commatis); third declension
- (in grammar):
- a comma (a division, member, or section of a period smaller than a colon)
- a comma (a mark of punctuation)
- (in verse) a caesura
Usage notes
- In the works of Cicero and Quintilian, the untransliterated Greek κόμμα (kómma) is used for comma in the grammatical sense of “a division…of a period smaller than a colon”.
Declension
Third-declension noun (neuter, imparisyllabic non-i-stem).
| Case | Singular | Plural |
|---|---|---|
| Nominative | comma | commata |
| Genitive | commatis | commatum |
| Dative | commatī | commatibus |
| Accusative | comma | commata |
| Ablative | commate | commatibus |
| Vocative | comma | commata |
Synonyms
- caesum
- (comma: division of a period): incīsum (pure Latin)
References
- “comma”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
- comma in Charles du Fresne du Cange’s Glossarium Mediæ et Infimæ Latinitatis (augmented edition with additions by D. P. Carpenterius, Adelungius and others, edited by Léopold Favre, 1883–1887)
- comma in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire illustré latin-français, Hachette, page 348/3