/ˈkɒmə/, /ˈkɔmə/, [ˈkɑ.mə ~ ˈkɑ.mʌ]
OriginFrom Latin comma, from Ancient Greek κόμμα (kómma), from κόπτω (kóptō, “I cut”).
- 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 t”
- RomanianA similar-looking subscript diacritical mark.
- 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”
“Other members of this genus that are frequently encountered in the park are the eastern comma (P. comma) and question mark (P. interrogationis).”
- A difference in the calculation of nearly identical intervals by different ways.
- A delimiting marker between items in a genetic sequence.
- rhetoricIn 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.
- figurativelyA brief interval.
- rare, transitiveTo place a comma or commas within text; to follow, precede, or surround a portion of text with commas.
Formscommas(plural) · commata(plural, rare) · commaes(obsolete, plural) · come(alternative, obsolete) · commas(present, singular, third-person) · commaing(participle, present) · commaed(participle, past) · commaed(past)