Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Semicolon |
SemicolonNoun1. A punctuation mark (;) used to connect independent clauses; indicates a closer relation than does a period. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "semicolon" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1843. (references) |
| Domain | Definitions |
Computing | Semicolon ; Common: ITU-T: semicolon; semi. Rare: weenie; INTERCAL: hybrid, pit-thwong. Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing. |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Examples:
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Semicolon."
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Cessation | Dead stop, dead stand, dead lock; finis, cerrado; blowout, burnout, meltdown, disintegration; comma, colon, semicolon, period, full stop; end; death. |
Indication | Keyboard symbols, printing symbols; red letter, italics, sublineation, underlining, bold font; jotting; note, annotation, reference; blaze, cedilla, guillemets, hachure; quotation marks, double quotes,"", parentheses, brackets, braces, curly brackets, arrows, slashes; left parenthesis, "("; right parenthesis, ")"; opening bracket, ""; left curly brace, "{"; right curly brace, "}"; left arrow, ""; right arrow, ""; forward slash, "/"; backward slash, "\"; exclamation point, "!"; commercial at, "@"; pound sign, "#"; percent sign, "%"; carat, "^"; ampersand, "&"; asterisk, ""; hyphen, "-"; dash, "-", "_"; em dash, "--"; plus sign, "+", equals sign, "="; question mark, "?"; period, "."; semicolon, ";", colon, ":"; comma, ","; apostrophe, "'"; single quote, "'"; tilde, "~". |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Semicolon |
| Specialty definitions using "semicolon": prepend ♦ syntactic sugar. (references) |
| Domain | Usage | |
Clever | Half of a large intestine: 1 semicolon. (references; author: unknown) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| "Semicolon" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 95.45% of the time. "Semicolon" is used about 22 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 95.45% | 21 | 76,261 |
| Noun (proper) | 4.55% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Total | 100.00% | 22 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
semicolon | 44 |
semicolon use | 22 |
semicolon usage | 8 |
semicolon use when | 7 |
between in item semicolon series use when | 7 |
colon semicolon | 6 |
grammar semicolon | 4 |
proper semicolon usage | 4 |
semicolon using | 3 |
rule semicolon | 3 |
proper semicolon use | 3 |
comma semicolon | 2 |
lesson plan semicolon | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "semicolon"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Albanian | pikëpresje. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Arabic | فارزة منقوطة, نقطة وفاصلة, علامة وقف. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Bulgarian | точка и запетая. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Chinese | 分號 , 分号. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Czech | středník. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Danish | semikolon. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dutch | puntkomma, punkt comma, kommapunt. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Esperanto | punktokomo. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Farsi | نقطه وویرگول بدین شکل; . (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Finnish | puolipiste. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
French | point-virgule, point virgule. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
German | Semikolon, Strichpunkt. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Greek | άνω τελεία. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hebrew | את ח (pause), קו"" ופסיק. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Hungarian | pontosvessző. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Indonesian | titik koma. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Italian | punto e virgola. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Kanji | セックス"業 (cement, manufacturer of assembled products, savory, semantic, semantics, semaphore, semiconductor, semi-double bed, seminar, semiprofessional, semi-tight skirt, sepia, session, set, set position, setting, setting lotion, setup, seven, Seven-Eleven, sex industry, shoulder length hair, three-quarter bed). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Japanese Katakana | セミコロン . (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Korean | 세미콜 . (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Manx | lieh-stad. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | emicolonsay ponto e vírgula. (various references) punct şi virgulã. (various references) точка с запятой. (various references) tačka i zapeta. (various references) punto y coma. (various references) semikolon (semi-colon). (various references) noktalı virgül. (various references) крапка з комою. (various references) dấu chấm phẩy. (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Derivations | |
Words beginning with "semicolon": semicolonial, semicolonialism, semicolonialisms, semicolonies, semicolons, semicolony. (additional references) | |
| |
"Semicolon" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: Sericol, simicolon. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "c-e-i-l-m-n-o-o-s" | |
-1 letter: colonies, colonise, eclosion, monocles, oinomels, simoleon. | |
-2 letters: cineols, clonism, coeloms, colones, console, coolies, inclose, incomes, locoism, lomeins, loonies, mesonic, monocle, noisome, oinomel. | |
-3 letters: celoms, cineol, climes, clines, clones, coelom, colies, colins, colone, coloni, colons, comose, conies, consol, coolie, cosine, eloins, enolic, eonism, icones, income, insole, lemons, lesion, limens, locoes, lomein, looies, loosen, melons. | |
| Words containing the letters "c-e-i-l-m-n-o-o-s" | |
+1 letter: monoclines, monostelic, semicolons, semicolony. | |
+2 letters: completions, complexions, scopolamine. | |
+3 letters: commonalties, contumelious, scopolamines, semicolonial, semicolonies. | |
+4 letters: campanologies, ceremoniously, commonalities, compellations, compendiously, complexations, compressional, coterminously, criminologies, homeschooling, mononucleosis, oleandomycins, tonsillectomy. | |
+5 letters: commonsensible, commonsensical, compassionless, compensational, contemplations, conterminously, contumeliously, emotionalistic, homeschoolings, indecomposable, miscorrelation, monoglycerides, monotheistical, neocolonialism, noncombustible, noncommercials, noncompliances, recompilations, sedimentologic, triamcinolones. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)53 65 6D 69 63 6F 6C 6F 6E |
| Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)
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| American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)
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| Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)
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| Braille (1829, in France) (references)
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Morse Code (1836) (references)... . -- .. -.-. --- .-.. --- -. |
| Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)
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Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)01010011 01100101 01101101 01101001 01100011 01101111 01101100 01101111 01101110 |
HTML Code (1990) (references)S e m i c o l o n |
ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)0053 0065 006D 0069 0063 006F 006C 006F 006E |
| British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)
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Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)537179756981788180 |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage Frequency | 5. Expressions: Internet 6. Translations: Modern 7. Derivations 8. Anagrams | 9. Orthography 10. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
