COMMA • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Comma

Translators

Dictionaries

Courses

Other

Home

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/kˈɑmə/ Listen

noun

Comma n.

A character or point (,) marking the smallest divisions of a sentence, written or printed.

(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 (Zool.), an American butterfly (Grapta comma), having a white comma-shaped marking on the under side of the wings.

See images of 'Comma'

Etymology of 'Comma'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Comma" Quotes from Famous Books

... rather pudgier than one would like one's swamis, yogis, seers, and initiates, yet her voice had the real professional note. It was refined and optimistic; it was overpoweringly calm; it flowed on relentlessly, without one comma, till Babbitt was hypnotized. Her favorite word was "always," which she pronounced olllllle-ways. Her principal gesture was a pontifical but thoroughly ladylike ...

— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis

... and formal element of his song. Shelley recked little of the jots and tittles of literary craftsmanship; he committed many a small sin against the rules of grammar, and certainly paid but a halting attention to the nice distinctions of punctuation. Thus in the early editions a comma occasionally plays the part of a semicolon; colons and semicolons seem to be employed interchangeably; a semicolon almost invariably appears where nowadays we should employ the dash; and, lastly, the dash itself ...

— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... gracious, when Stefana got to your mother, seemed as if I'd burst! We hollered it to Carruthers, an' he burst! An' Elly Precious knows she's comin', I know he knows. Tickle him an' see how pleased he is!" Without comma or semicolon, to say nothing of periods, Evangeline panted on. Out of breath at last, her voice sat down an instant, as it were, to rest. It was up ...

— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell

... describes Savage's 'superstitious regard to the correction of his sheets ... The intrusion or omission of a comma was sufficient to discompose him, and he would lament an errour of a single letter ...

— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell

... should abound in the text of Lovelace is the more lamentable because he was apt to make a play of phrases that depend upon the precision of a comma—nay, upon the precision of the voice in reading. Lucasta Paying her Obsequies is a poem that makes a kind of dainty confusion between the two vestals—the living and the dead; they are "equal virgins," ...

— Flower of the Mind • Alice Meynell

More quotes...