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comma - 8 dictionary results

com⋅ma

[kom-uh]
–noun
1. the sign (,), a mark of punctuation used for indicating a division in a sentence, as in setting off a word, phrase, or clause, esp. when such a division is accompanied by a slight pause or is to be noted in order to give order to the sequential elements of the sentence. It is also used to separate items in a list, to mark off thousands in numerals, to separate types or levels of information in bibliographic and other data, and, in Europe, as a decimal point.
2. Classical Prosody.
a. a fragment or smaller section of a colon.
b. the part of dactylic hexameter beginning or ending with the caesura.
c. the caesura itself.
3. Music. the minute, virtually unheard difference in pitch between two enharmonic tones, as G♯ and A♭.
4. any of several nymphalid butterflies, as Polygonia comma, having a comma-shaped silver mark on the underside of each hind wing.

Origin:
1520–30; < LL: mark of punctuation, L: division of a phrase < Gk kómma piece cut off (referring to the phrase so marked), equiv. to kop- (base of kóptein to strike, chop) + -ma n. suffix denoting result of action (with assimilation of p)
com·ma   (kŏm'ə)   
n.  
  1. Grammar A punctuation mark ( , ) used to indicate a separation of ideas or of elements within the structure of a sentence.
  2. A pause or separation; a caesura.
  3. Any of several butterflies of the genus Polygonia, having wings with brownish coloring and irregularly notched edges.

[Latin, from Greek komma, piece cut off, short clause, from koptein, to cut.]

Comma

Com"ma\, n. [L. comma part of a sentence, comma, Gr. ? clause, fr. ? to cut off. Cf. Capon.]

1. A character or point [,] marking the smallest divisions of a sentence, written or printed.

2. (Mus.) A small interval (the difference between a major and minor half step), seldom used except by tuners.

Comma bacillus (Physiol.), a variety of bacillus shaped like a comma, found in the intestines of patients suffering from cholera. It is considered by some as having a special relation to the disease; -- called also cholera bacillus.

Comma butterfly (Zo["o]l.), an American butterfly (Grapta comma), having a white comma-shaped marking on the under side of the wings.
Language Translation for : comma
Spanish: coma,
German: das Komma,
Japanese: コンマ

comma

A punctuation mark (,) used to indicate pauses and to separate elements within a sentence. “The forest abounds with oak, elm, and beech trees”; “The bassoon player was born in Roanoke, Virginia, on December 29, 1957.”


comma 
1586, "short phrase," from L. comma, from Gk. komma "clause in a sentence," lit. "piece which is cut off," from koptein "to cut off," from PIE base *(s)kep- "to cut, split." Like colon, period, a Gk. rhetorical term for part of a sentence which has been transferred to the punctuation mark that identifies it. Used as such in Eng. as a L. word from 1530; nativized by 1599.

Comma project
COMputable MAthematics.
An ESPRIT project at KU Nijmegen.
(1994-11-30)

comma character
"," ASCII character 44. Common names: ITU-T: comma. Rare: ITU-T: cedilla; INTERCAL: tail.
In the C programming language, "," is an operator which evaluates its first argument (which presumably has side-effects) and then returns the value of its second argument. This is useful in "for" statements and macros.
(1995-03-10)

comma

in music, slight difference in frequency (and therefore pitch) occurring when a note of a scale, say E in the scale of C, is derived according to different systems of tuning. There are two commonly cited commas, the Pythagorean comma and the comma of Didymus, or syntonic comma

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