comma
Language: English
Part of speech: noun
Pronunciation: enpr: kŏm'ə
ipa: /ˈkɒmə/
ipa: /ˈkɔmə/
note: weak vowel merger
ipa: [ˈkɑ.mə ~ ˈkɑ.mʌ]
note: Indic
ipa: /ˈkɔmɑ/
enpr: kə-mä'
ipa: /kəˈmɑ/
Forms: form: commas
form: commata
form: commaes
form: come
Etymology: From Latin comma, from Ancient Greek κόμμα (kómma), from κόπτω (kóptō, “I cut”).
Senses: examples: text: 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.
ref: 1828, Richard Thomson, Illustrations of the History of Great Britain, Vol. II, pp. 145–6
topics: media
publishing
typography
synonyms: word: scratch comma
word: virgule
word: virgula
english: in its obsolete form as a slash
translation: in its obsolete form as a slash
word: come
english: in its obsolete form as a middot
translation: in its obsolete form as a middot
word: comma-point
glosses: The punctuation mark ⟨,⟩ used to indicate a set of parts of a sentence or between elements of a list.
topics: media
publishing
typography
glosses: A similar-looking subscript diacritical mark.
examples: text: 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.
ref: 2004, Scott Shalaway, “Close-ups”, in Butterflies in the Backyard, Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, →ISBN, page 18:
text: Other members of this genus that are frequently encountered in the park are the eastern comma (P. comma) and question mark (P. interrogationis).
ref: 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:
topics: biology
entomology
natural-sciences
glosses: 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.
topics: entertainment
lifestyle
music
glosses: A difference in the calculation of nearly identical intervals by different ways.
topics: biology
genetics
medicine
natural-sciences
sciences
glosses: A delimiting marker between items in a genetic sequence.
glosses: 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.
glosses: A brief interval.
Derived terms: sense: punctuation mark
word: comma bacillus
sense: punctuation mark
word: comma butterfly
sense: punctuation mark
word: comma category
sense: punctuation mark
word: commaless
sense: punctuation mark
word: comma lichen
sense: punctuation mark
word: commalike
sense: punctuation mark
word: comma-point
sense: punctuation mark
word: comma queen
sense: punctuation mark
word: comma splice
sense: punctuation mark
word: commify
sense: punctuation mark
word: decimal comma
sense: punctuation mark
word: dun comma
sense: punctuation mark
word: fat comma
sense: punctuation mark
word: Harvard comma
sense: punctuation mark
word: high comma
sense: punctuation mark
word: ideographic comma
sense: punctuation mark
word: myocomma
sense: punctuation mark
word: scratch-comma
sense: punctuation mark
word: Shatner comma