Comma

[kom-uh] /ˈkɒm ə/

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, especially 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.

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.
/ˈkɒmə/
noun
1.
the punctuation mark(,) indicating a slight pause in the spoken sentence and used where there is a listing of items or to separate a nonrestrictive clause or phrase from a main clause
2.
(music) a minute interval
3.
short for comma butterfly
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.

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.”

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

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)