2089: Original Meaning of Comma, Period, and Colon | Sep 3, 2020

Today, commas, periods, and colons are all terms for punctuation, but this was not any of their original senses, looking back at those words’ histories. Indeed, all of them were rhetorical terms or used for poetry. A comma in Latin referred to a short phrase, line of a poem, or a clause of a sentence; period referred a complete sentence or “full pause”, and colon just referred to a part of a poem, and comes from Greek, literally ‘limb’. Of those, ‘colon’ has likely changed the most, as it referred to far more substantial divisions than it does now.

Check out the new video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3qWOEUXr3k
Get Merch: teespring.com/stores/word-facts
Support on Patreon.com/wordfacts

Screen Shot 2020-09-04 at 2.45.59 PM.png
Previous
Previous

2090: Turkish Special Letters: İ and ı Sep 4, 2020

Next
Next

2088: week Sep 2, 2020