Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Printing A diagonal mark ( / ) used especially to separate alternatives, as in and/or, to represent the word per, as in miles/hour, and to indicate the ends of verse lines printed continuously, as in Old King Cole/Was a merry old soul.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A little rod; a twig.
- n. A Comma. Hallam, Lit. Hist, of Europe, i. 8
Wiktionary
- n. The diagonal slash character - /, used to separate parts of text, and to represent the word per in expressions such as feet/second.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. A comma.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a punctuation mark (/) used to separate related items of information
Etymologies
- French, comma, obelus, from Late Latin virgula, accentual mark, from Latin, obelus, diminutive of virga, rod.
Examples
“A virgule is closer to the vertical than a solidus, but usually one has to see them side by side in the same typeface to know the difference.”
“In English the word virgule denotes “/”, the mark commonly known as the slash.”
“Slavs! had minimal impact for me, and although in Home/Kabul, the segment preceding the virgule is inspired, the lengthier portion following that slash, he has yet to get right.”
“Commas were not employed until the 16th century; in early printed books in English one sees a virgule a slash like this /, which the comma replaced around 1520.”
“Often, the French ‘virgule’ is used differently than in English.”
“It was once common as a sort of bullet point and in legal codes, but is now visible mostly to writers using word-processing programs. virgule:/”
“The term "slash" comes from the virgule (or slash) between character names - for instance Kirk/Spock is fiction dealing with a gay relationship between "Star Trek's" Kirk and Spock.”
“Worse would be a shift to a decade made famous by obscure punctuation marks, such as the interrobang or virgule.”
“I tried this about 10 minutes ago with and without the trailing virgule on the URL, and the results said the ping was accepted, but I have yet to see BatesLine's updated status change.”
“Après chaque virgule, il faudrait un retour à la ligne.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘virgule’.
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Gram-Lang
pleonastic, synecdoche, solecism, virgule, fricative, altiloquent, chrestomathy, orthography, mondegreen, polysemy, zeugma, Syllepsis and 6 more...
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Comma Chameleon
On the art of commatology.
commatology, comma, series comma, Oxford comma, Harvard comma, komma, a cat has claws a..., what's the differ..., commando, comma-separated v..., Comma, inverted comma and 12 more...
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Words I Intend to use.
selectarian, solastalgia, niefling, eldritch, santagnostic, laborious, obstreperous, quibble, inusitate, cacology, tmesis, cacoethes and 50 more...
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Not quite love
prolix, pleonastic, senescence, autochthonous, loup, pronk, onomatopoeia, magisterial, rixatrix, esurient, blowsabella, crapulence and 57 more...
reesetee The so-called forward slash or stroke. Also solidus. Feb 23, 2007