comma
Etymology

From Latin comma, from Ancient Greek κόμμα, from κόπτω ("I cut").

Pronunciation
    • (RP) IPA: /ˈkɒm.ə/
    • (SSB) IPA: /ˈkɔ.mə/
  • (America) enPR: kŏ'mə, IPA: /ˈkɑ.mə ~ ˈkɑ.mʌ/
  • (Canada) IPA: /ˈkɒ.mə/
  • (Australia) enPR: kŏm'ə, IPA: /ˈkɔm.ə/
Noun

comma (plural commas)

  1. (typography) The punctuation mark ⟨,⟩ used to indicate a set of parts of a sentence or between elements of a list.
    Synonyms: scratch comma, virgule, virgula, come, comma-point
    Hyponyms: comma of Didymus, inverted comma, Oxford comma, serial comma, syntonic comma
  2. (Romanian typography) A similar-looking subscript diacritical mark.
  3. (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.
  4. (music) A difference in the calculation of nearly identical intervals by different ways.
  5. (genetics) A delimiting marker between items in a genetic sequence.
  6. (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.
  7. (figurative) A brief interval.
Translations Translations
  • German: C-Falter
Verb

comma (commas, present participle commaing; simple past and past participle commaed)

  1. (rare, transitive) To place a comma or commas within text; to follow, precede, or surround a portion of text with commas.
Translations


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