comma

English

a comma butterfly (Polygonia c-album)

Alternative forms

Etymology

Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *(s)kep-?
Proto-Hellenic *kopt͏̌ō
Ancient Greek κόπτω (kóptō)
Proto-Indo-European *-mn̥
Proto-Hellenic *-mə
Ancient Greek -μᾰ (-mă)
Ancient Greek κόμμα (kómma)
Latin commabor.
English comma

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

    Pronunciation

    Noun

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

    2. (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
    3. (Romanian typography) A similar-looking subscript diacritical mark.
    4. Anything resembling or having the shape of a comma.
      • 1955, Ian Fleming, “‘Belly Strippers’, etc.”, in Moonraker, London: Pan Books, published 1959, page 23:
        There was something swift and intent in the way he ran his fingers along his jaw and in the impatient stroke of the hairbrush to put back the comma of black hair that fell down an inch above his right eyebrow.
    5. (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).
    6. (music) A difference in the calculation of nearly identical intervals by different ways.
    7. (genetics) A delimiting marker between items in a genetic sequence.
    8. (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.
    9. (figurative) A brief interval.
    10. (meteorology) A cloud shaped like a comma because of differential rotation of the cloud border and adjacent upward and downward vertical motions, often appearing in large and intense low-pressure systems.
      • 2026 February 23, Judson Jones, “See the Storm’s Shape From Space”, in The New York Times‎[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, retrieved 25 September 2026:
        Satellite images on Monday morning revealed the textbook “comma cloud” shape of a powerful nor’easter. The storm’s long tail stretches south through the Florida peninsula, while the main “head” of the comma churns over the Northeastern United States, where the most severe conditions have been unfolding.
        (Can we archive this URL?)

    Derived terms

    punctuation mark

    Translations

    The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
    Translations to be checked

    Verb

    comma (third-person singular simple present commas, present participle commaing, simple past and past participle commaed or comma'd)

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

    Translations

    See also

    Further reading

    French

    Pronunciation

    Verb

    comma

    1. third-person singular past historic of commer

    Italian

    Pronunciation

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

    Noun

    comma m (plural commi)

    1. (law) subsection, subparagraph
      ll secondo comma dell'articolo 3
      the second subparagraph of article 3
    2. (music) comma

    Latin

    Etymology

    Etymology tree
    Proto-Indo-European *(s)kep-?
    Proto-Hellenic *kopt͏̌ō
    Ancient Greek κόπτω (kóptō)
    Proto-Indo-European *-mn̥
    Proto-Hellenic *-mə
    Ancient Greek -μᾰ (-mă)
    Ancient Greek κόμμα (kómma)
    Latin comma

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

      Pronunciation

      Noun

      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

      Usage notes

      • 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”.

      Declension

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

      singular plural
      nominative comma commata
      genitive commatis commatum
      dative commatī commatibus
      accusative comma commata
      ablative commate commatibus
      vocative comma commata

      Synonyms

      References

      • “comma”, in Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (1879), A Latin Dictionary, Oxford: Clarendon Press
      • "comma", in Charles du Fresne du Cange, 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.
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