comma
UK /ˈkɒmə/ · US [ˈkɑ.mə ~ ˈkɑ.mʌ] noun, verb
Forms commas commata commaing commaed comma'd commaes come
- noun (typography) The punctuation mark ⟨,⟩ used to indicate a set of parts of a sentence or between elements of a list.
- noun (Romanian typography) A similar-looking subscript diacritical mark.
- noun (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.
- noun (music) A difference in the calculation of nearly identical intervals by different ways.
- noun (genetics) A delimiting marker between items in a genetic sequence.
- noun (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.
- noun (figurative) A brief interval.
- verb (rare, transitive) To place a comma or commas within text; to follow, precede, or surround a portion of text with commas.
Synonyms
scratch comma virgule virgula come comma-point comma butterfly Polygonia comma
Etymology
From Latin comma, from Ancient Greek κόμμα (kómma), from κόπτω (kóptō, “to cut”).
Webster’s 1913
- noun A character or point [,] marking the smallest divisions of a sentence, written or printed.
- noun A small interval (the difference beyween a major and minor half step), seldom used except by tuners. Comma bacillus (Physiol.), a variety of bacillus shaped like a comma, found in the intestines of patients suffering from cholera. It is considered by some as having a special relation to the disease; --called also cholera bacillus.
Etymology [L. comma part of a sentence, comma, Gr. Capon.]
Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “comma”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details