virgula

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See also: vírgula and virgulă

English

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Wikipedia
An image of a virga or virgula, displaying its stem

Etymology

From Latin virgula (“twig; wand; scratch comma”), from virga (“branch; rod”) + -ulus (“-ule: forming diminutives”). As a dowsing rod, via virgula divina or divinatoria. Doublet of virgule.

Pronunciation

Noun

virgula (plural virgulas or virgulae)

  1. (zoology) A small, thin, straight growth, particularly:
    1. (obsolete) The spines of a ray.
    2. (obsolete) The sicula of a graptolite.
  2. (obsolete) A divining or dowsing rod.
  3. (rare) Any small rod.
  4. (typography, rare) Synonym of virgule: a punctuation mark.
    • 1728, Ephraim Chambers, “Point”, in Cyclopædia:
      A Point with a Virgula, call'd a Semicolon.
    • 1934, Robert C. Priebsch et al., chapter X, in The German Language, volume II, page 380:
      The full stop or, instead, a virgula, i.e. a short slanting strike (/) is used... to mark the end of a sentence or of a portion of a sentence followed by a pause.
  5. (music, obsolete) Synonym of stem: the tail of a note.
  6. (music, historical, obsolete) Synonym of virga: one of the neumes of medieval musical notation.

Synonyms

References

  • Oxford English Dictionary, 1st ed. "virgula, n." Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1917.

French

Pronunciation

Verb

virgula

  1. third-person singular past historic of virguler

Latin

Etymology

From virga (“twig, branch”) +‎ -ula. As a typographic mark, from its resemblance and size.

Pronunciation

Noun

virgula f (genitive virgulae); first declension

  1. a small rod, stick, wand, or staff
  2. (Medieval Latin, typography) the slash mark ⟨/⟩, particularly (historical or obsolete) in its medieval use as a scratch comma.
  3. tender shoot, tendril

Declension

First-declension noun.

singular plural
nominative virgula virgulae
genitive virgulae virgulārum
dative virgulae virgulīs
accusative virgulam virgulās
ablative virgulā virgulīs
vocative virgula virgulae

Derived terms

Descendants

  • Italian: vergola
  • Venetan: vérgoła

Borrowings:

References

  • “virgula”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879) A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
  • “virgula”, in Charlton T. Lewis (1891) An Elementary Latin Dictionary, New York: Harper & Brothers
  • virgula 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)
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