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comma

noun

  1. punctuation mark
L16578 on Wikidata ↗

Wiktionary

Pronunciation: /ˈkɒmə/ / /ˈkɔmə/ / [ˈkɑ.mə ~ ˈkɑ.mʌ]

noun

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

  1. The punctuation mark ⟨,⟩ used to indicate a set of parts of a sentence or between elements of a list.

    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.

  2. A similar-looking subscript diacritical mark.
  3. 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.

    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.

    Other members of this genus that are frequently encountered in the park are the eastern comma (P. comma) and question mark (P. interrogationis).

  4. A difference in the calculation of nearly identical intervals by different ways.
  5. A delimiting marker between items in a genetic sequence.
  6. 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.
  7. A brief interval.

verb

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

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