comma

• come (obsolete)

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

• (UK) enPR: kŏm'ə, IPA^(key): /ˈkɒm.ə/
• (US) enPR: kŏ'mə, IPA^(key): /ˈkɑ.mə/

  • Audio (US)

    (file)

• (Canada) IPA^(key): /ˈkɒ.mə/
• (General Australian) enPR: kŏm'ə, IPA^(key): /ˈkɔm.ə/
• Rhymes: -ɒmə

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

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, (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.

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.
   • 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).

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.

comma (third-person singular simple present 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.

Punctuation

• comma on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Comma (punctuation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• Comma (butterfly) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

• Audio

  (file)

• Homophones: commas, commât

comma

1. third-person singular past historic of commer

• IPA^(key): /ˈkɔm.ma/
• Rhymes: -ɔmma
• Hyphenation: còm‧ma

comma m (plural commi)

1. (law) subsection, subparagraph

   ll secondo comma dell'articolo 3

   the second subparagraph of article 3

2. (music) comma

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

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈkom.ma/, [ˈkɔmːä]
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ˈkom.ma/, [ˈkɔmːä]

comma n (genitive commatis); third declension

1. (in grammar):
   1. a comma (a division, member, or section of a period smaller than a colon)
   2. a comma (a mark of punctuation)
2. (in verse) a caesura

• 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”.

Third-declension noun (neuter, imparisyllabic non-i-stem).

• caesum
• (comma: division of a period): incīsum (pure Latin)

• “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.