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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

comma.

The punctuation mark ⟨,⟩ used to indicate a set of parts of a sentence or between elements of a list.

5 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

noun/ˈkɒmə/Canada, Received-Pronunciation/ˈkɔmə/Australia, British, Southern, Standard[ˈkɑ.mə ~ ˈkɑ.mʌ]Atlantic-Canada, US/ˈkɔmɑ/South-Asia

  1. The punctuation mark ⟨,⟩ used to indicate a set of parts of a sentence or between elements of a list.

  2. A similar-looking subscript diacritical mark.

    Romanian

  3. 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.

  4. A difference in the calculation of nearly identical intervals by different ways.

  5. A delimiting marker between items in a genetic sequence.

  6. 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.

    rhetoric

  7. A brief interval.

    figuratively
Where this word comes from

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”).

verb/ˈkɒmə/Canada, Received-Pronunciation/ˈkɔmə/Australia, British, Southern, Standard[ˈkɑ.mə ~ ˈkɑ.mʌ]Atlantic-Canada, US/ˈkɔmɑ/South-Asia

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

    rare · transitive
Where this word comes from

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”).

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.