comma
pronunciation
How to pronounce comma in British English:
UK [ˈkɒmə]
How to pronounce comma in American English:
US [ˈkɑmə]
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- 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
Word Origin
- comma
- comma: [16] Greek kómma meant literally ‘piece cut off, segment’. It derived from the verb kóptein ‘cut’, relatives of which include Russian kopje ‘lance’, source of the coin-name kopeck, and probably English capon. Kómma came to be applied metaphorically, as a technical term in prosody, to a small piece of a sentence, a ‘short clause’, a sense which it retained when it reached English via Latin comma. It was not long before, like colon, it was applied to the punctuation mark signifying the end of such a clause.=> capon, kopeck
- comma (n.)
- 1520s as a Latin word, nativized by 1590s, from Latin comma "short phrase," from Greek komma "clause in a sentence," literally "piece which is cut off," from koptein "to cut off," from PIE root *kop- "to beat, strike" (see hatchet (n.)). Like colon (n.1) and period, originally a Greek rhetorical term for a part of a sentence, and like them it has been transferred to the punctuation mark that identifies it.
Example
- 1. The following sentences all lack a necessary comma .
- 2. Samuel beckett was the poet laureate of the comma splice .
- 3. She likes to think of a semicolon as a comma with vibrato .
- 4. Two particular situations seem to bring out a lot of comma splices .
- 5. The interrogative version of its best friend the exclamation comma .