# comma
## English
### Alternative forms

* come (obsolete)

### Etymology

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

### Pronunciation

* (UK) enPR: kŏm'ə
** (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˈkɒm.ə/
** (Standard Southern British) IPA: /ˈkɔ.mə/
* (US) enPR: kŏ'mə, IPA: /ˈkɑ.mə ~ ˈkɑ.mʌ/ (weak vowel merger)
** Audio (US):(file)
* (Canada) IPA: /ˈkɒ.mə/
* (General Australian) enPR: kŏm'ə, IPA: /ˈkɔm.ə/
* (Indic) IPA: /ˈkɒmaː/, /kaˈmaː/
* Rhymes: -ɒmə

### Noun

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

* comma bacillus
* comma butterfly
* comma category
* commaless
* commalike
* comma-point
* comma queen
* comma splice
* commify
* dun comma
* fat comma
* Harvard comma
* high comma
* ideographic comma
* myocomma
* scratch-comma

#### Translations

    The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.

### 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
### 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: /ˈkɔm.ma/
* Rhymes: -ɔmma
* Hyphenation: còm‧ma

### Noun

comma m (plural commi)
* (law) subsection, subparagraph
    ll secondo comma dell'articolo 3the second subparagraph of article 3
* (music) comma

## Latin
### Etymology

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

### Pronunciation

* (Classical Latin) IPA: /ˈkom.ma/, [ˈkɔmːä]
* (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA: /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).

#### 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.