comma

Etymology

It is borrowed from Latin comma (“a short phrase or clause”),^[2][3][4][5] perhaps through Middle French comma,^[6] from Ancient Greek κόμμα (kómma, “a piece cut off; a short clause; a stamp, coinage”),^[3][2][7][8] from κόπτω (kóptō, “to strike, cut off”).^[3][5][7][9] The OED reconstructs the noun as *κόπμα (*kópma), from the root of the verb.^[3] In Late Latin it was also the name of the punctuation mark and of a musical interval.^[10][11] Etymonline traces the Greek verb perhaps to Proto-Indo-European *kop- (“to beat, strike”), or perhaps to Pre-Greek.^[2] Klein and Barnhart relate it to cāpō (“capon”), the source of capon,^[7][6] and Ayto counts the Russian word for a lance, the source of kopeck, among its relatives.^[9]

Earliest recorded meaning

A short part of a sentence, a division of a period: 1586, in Angel Day's The English Secretary, according to Barnhart.^[6] Etymonline finds it used in English as a Latin word from the 1520s, and naturalised by the 1590s.^[2] The OED's first record is 1589, in Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, and its first for the rhetorical sense 1592, in Day's English Secretorie.^[3]

Semantic evolution

Comma, like colon and period, was first a term of Greek rhetoric and prosody for a part of a sentence: the period was a complete sentence, the colon a clause, and the comma a short segment.^[6][2] As with colon, the name passed to the punctuation mark that ends such a segment;^[9][2][6] the punctuation sense is first recorded in English in 1599.^[6][3] Etymonline notes that although the mark lets a reader pause slightly, its purpose is to show grammatical structure.^[2] Figurative uses for a break or pause appear from 1602,^[3] and in music, from 1597, the word names a minute difference of pitch;^[3] Johnson (1755) defined it as the interval by which a semitone or a perfect tone exceeds the imperfect tone.^[12] From the shape of the mark came the comma butterfly (1749) and the comma bacillus of cholera (1886).^[3] The verb, to punctuate with commas, is recorded from 1664.^[3] In recent African American slang commas, the commas written in large numbers, means wealth.^[13]

Timeline

• 1520s – used in English texts, at first as a Latin word.^[2][11]
• 1586 – a short part of a sentence.^[6]
• 1597 – in music, a minute interval of pitch.^[3]
• 1599 – the punctuation mark.^[3][6]
• 1602 – figuratively, a break or pause.^[3]
• 1649 – a clause or short section of a treatise (obsolete by 1671).^[3]
• 1664 – verb, to punctuate with commas.^[3]
• 1705 – a raised comma used as a quotation mark.^[3]
• 1749 – the comma butterfly.^[3]
• 1886 – the comma bacillus.^[3]
• 2012 – commas, wealth, in African American slang.^[13]

Meanings

Noun

1. A punctuation mark (,) showing a slight pause or a division within a sentence, used to separate items in a list or to set off a clause or phrase: Put a comma after the greeting.^[14][10][3]
2. In music, a minute interval or difference of pitch.^[14][3][12]
3. Short for comma butterfly, a butterfly with a white comma-shaped mark on the underside of the wing.^[14][3]
4. In ancient prosody and rhetoric, a short phrase or group of words, smaller than a colon.^[10][3][4]
5. (US slang, usually commas) Wealth, a large amount of money.^[13]
6. (obsolete, 1649–1671) A clause or short section of a treatise or argument.^[10][3]

Word family

• series comma
• comma bacillus
• comma splice

Related words

• colon
• period
• capon
• kopeck
• syncope
• pericope

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
7. ^ a b c Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
8. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ a b c Ayto, John (2005), Word Origins: The Secret Histories of English Words from A to Z, 2nd ed., London: A & C Black
10. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
11. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
12. ^ a b Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
13. ^ a b c Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
14. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins