colon
- 1The punctuation mark written ⟨:⟩, formed by two dots placed one above the other.
The editor inserted a colon to separate the title from the subtitle.
A ratio such as three to one is often written with a colon between the numbers.
Note
Three unrelated words share this spelling. This one comes from Greek kôlon, "a limb, a clause, part of a verse," and the mark still points toward clauses. As William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White put it in The Elements of Style, a colon tells the reader that what follows is closely related to the clause before it. The intestine and the colonial settler come from other sources.
- 2The largest part of the large intestine, forming the final segment of the digestive tract between the ileum and the rectum.
The surgeon removed a small section of the patient's colon during the operation.
Inflammation of the colon can cause severe abdominal pain.
Similarbowel
Note
A different Greek word lies behind the anatomical colon: kólon, the large intestine, which could also mean food or fodder. In strict anatomy it is one part of the large intestine, ending where the rectum begins. In everyday speech, though, the two names are used interchangeably. Medicine pairs it with its neighbor: colorectal cancer covers both colon cancer and rectal cancer.
- 3USkuh-LOHN/kəˈloʊn/UKkuh-LON/kəˈlɒn/A European colonial settler, particularly one living in a French colony.
The colon employed dozens of local laborers on his vineyard.
After independence, thousands of colons fled back to Europe.
Note
Historians use this word for the settler communities themselves, keeping the French term. It shares its French origin with the obsolete farming word. Alistair Horne's A Savage War of Peace (1977) writes of "the European colons" and their mixture of shock and fear. The word belongs to writing about French colonial rule, and it often appears in the plural to name the settlers as a group.
- 4A rhetorical figure made up of a clause that is grammatically complete but not logically complete.
The orator built his sentence from three carefully balanced colons.
Each colon stands complete in its grammar yet leans on what follows for its sense.
Note
Rhetoric keeps the Greek image most clearly: a colon is a limb of a sentence. It can stand on its own grammatically, but its thought reaches past it into what comes next. An orator balances several of them to build a longer sentence. In this scholarly setting the Greek-shaped plural cola sits comfortably beside the ordinary colons, and both are correct.
- 5A clause or group of clauses written as a single line, or used as a unit of measure in ancient manuscripts.
The editor arranged each colon on its own line for clarity.
Ancient copyists were sometimes paid according to the number of colons they transcribed.
Note
A scribe's and editor's term rather than an orator's. Where the rhetorical figure is a unit of thought, here the clause becomes a unit of the page. Each one gets its own line, so a manuscript's length could be reckoned by counting them. When reading paleography, think of layout and measurement, not style. The plural cola suits this setting as well.
Less common meanings
- 6A triangular form of the colon, used as a stand-in when the actual triangular symbol cannot be typed.
He wrote a colon here because his keyboard could not produce the triangular symbol.
The transcription marks each colon where the original used the triangular sign.
- 7USkuh-LOHN/kəˈloʊn/UKkuh-LON/kəˈlɒn/One who farms and tills the land; a husbandman.
The colon labored from dawn to dusk tending his master's land.
Each colon owed a share of his harvest to the lord of the manor.
Note
Long out of use, this is one of two senses that came into English from French colon; the other survives as the colonial settler. Today it turns up only in older texts. There, context has to separate it from the punctuation mark and the intestine. A modern writer would simply say farmer, or husbandman for a period flavor.
Practice
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Origins
From Latin cōlon ("a member of a verse of a poem"), which came from Ancient Greek kôlon ("a member, limb, clause, or part of a verse").
From Latin colon ("large intestine"), which came from Ancient Greek kólon ("the large intestine, also food, meat, or fodder").
From French colon.