comma

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English

a comma butterfly (Polygonia c-album)

Alternative forms

Etymology

From Latin comma, from Ancient Greek κόμμα (kómma), from κόπτω (kóptō, “I cut”).

Pronunciation

Noun

comma (plural commas or (rare) commata or (obsolete) commaes)

  2. (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
  3. (Romanian typography) A similar-looking subscript diacritical mark.
  4. (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).
  5. (music) A difference in the calculation of nearly identical intervals by different ways.
  6. (genetics) A delimiting marker between items in a genetic sequence.
  7. (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.
  8. (figurative) A brief interval.

Derived terms

(punctuation mark):

Translations

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Translations to be checked

Verb

comma (third-person singular simple present commas, present participle commaing, simple past and past participle commaed)

  1. (rare, transitive) To place a comma or commas within text; to follow, precede, or surround a portion of text with commas.

Translations

See also

Punctuation

Further reading

French

Pronunciation

Verb

comma

  1. third-person singular past historic of commer

Italian

Pronunciation

Noun

comma m (plural commi)

  1. (law) subsection, subparagraph
    ll secondo comma dell'articolo 3
    the second subparagraph of article 3
  2. (music) comma

Latin

Etymology

From the Ancient Greek κόμμα (kómma), from κόπτω (kóptō, “I cut”).

Pronunciation

Noun

comma n (genitive commatis); third declension

  1. (in grammar):
    1. a comma (a division, member, or section of a period smaller than a colon)
    2. a comma (a mark of punctuation)
  2. (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).

singular plural
nominative comma commata
genitive commatis commatum
dative commatī commatibus
accusative comma commata
ablative commate commatibus
vocative comma commata

Synonyms

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.
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