Etymologically
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comma

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Pronunciation

  • /kəˈmɑ/[1]
  • UK: /ˈkɒmə/[1]

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

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