comma

• (obsolete): come

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

• (UK) enPR: kŏm'ə, IPA^(key): /ˈkɒm.ə/
• (US) enPR: kŏm'-ə, IPA^(key): /ˈkɑm.ə/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɒmə

comma (plural commas or commata)

1. (typography) The punctuation mark ⟨,⟩ used to indicate a set off parts of a sentence or between elements of a list.
   • 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. A European and North American butterfly, Polygonia c-album, of the family Nymphalidae.
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. 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. (figuratively) A brief interval.

• (English typography): scratch comma, virgule, virgil, virgula (in its obsolete form as a slash); come (in its obsolete form as a middot); comma-point (obsolete)

• (punctuation mark): See serial comma

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

comma m (plural commi)

1. (law) subsection
2. (music) comma

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

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ˈkom.ma/, [ˈkɔm.ma]

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 neuter.

• 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, 1883–1887)
• comma in Gaffiot, Félix (1934) Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français, Hachette, page 348/3