comma

Meanings

Plural: commaes, commas, commata

Noun

• a punctuation mark (,) used to indicate the separation of elements within the grammatical structure of a sentence
• anglewing butterfly with a comma-shaped mark on the underside of each hind wing
• The punctuation mark ⟨,⟩ used to indicate a set of parts of a sentence or between elements of a list.
• A 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.
• A difference in the calculation of nearly identical intervals by different ways.
• A delimiting marker between items in a genetic sequence.
• 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.
• A brief interval.

Verb

• To place a comma or commas within text; to follow, precede, or surround a portion of text with commas.

Synonyms

come, comma butterfly, comma-point, Polygonia comma, scratch comma, virgula, virgule

Related Words

apostrophe, brace, bracket, Canada), colon, curly brackets, dash, ellipsis, exclamation mark, fraction slash, full stop, guillemet, hyphen, interpunct, interrobang, parentheses (US, period, question mark, quotation marks, semicolon, slash, space, square bracket, stroke