question mark

Pluralquestion marks

1. 1
   written symbolnouncountable

   The punctuation mark ?, placed at the end of a sentence to show that it is a question.

   You forgot the question mark at the end of your second sentence.

   On the field map, the geologist marked the uncertain boundaries with question marks.

   Similarquery

   Note

   Other names for it include interrogation point, note of interrogation and the learned eroteme. It closes a direct question but not a reported one: Where is she? but I asked where she was. Beside quotation marks it goes inside when only the quoted words ask (She asked, "Ready?") and outside when the whole sentence does (Did he say "tomorrow"?).

2. 2
   doubtnouncolloquialfigurativelycountable

   A state of doubt or uncertainty about something.

   A question mark hangs over the stadium project now that the main sponsor has pulled out.

   Doctors say there are still question marks about the drug's long-term safety.

   Similardoubt, uncertainty

   Oppositecertainty

   Note

   The figure usually hangs over something: there is a question mark over a player's fitness, or about a drug's safety. E. M. Butler's The Fortunes of Faust (1952) keeps the punctuation in view, finding "a faint, wavering question-mark at the end of an otherwise unequivocal statement".

3. 3
   mysterynouncolloquialfigurativelycountable

   A person or thing that is enigmatic, inscrutable or mysterious.

   To his classmates, the quiet boy who transferred in March was a complete question mark.

   The painting's meaning remains a question mark even to the experts who restored it.

   Similarmystery, puzzle

   Note

   This use often takes to, naming who is puzzled: to most of the class, middle school is a question mark. Big and complete intensify it, as when Leo Strauss, in The City and Man (1964), calls the Platonic dialogue "one big question mark". Unlike the state of doubt, this question mark is the puzzle itself.

4. 4
   said aloudparticlecolloquial

   Spoken at the end of a sentence to make it a question and show that the speaker is second-guessing it, usually in an exaggerated, rising tone.

   We could probably launch by March, question mark?

   And ketchup counts as a vegetable, question mark?

   Note

   Speakers voice the punctuation as if dictating it, tacking it onto a sentence they want checked. It can follow a statement, as in we could launch by March, question mark?, or double a sentence that is already a question: can anybody join, question mark? In writing, a comma sets it off.

5. 5
   butterflynouncountable

   A North American nymphalid butterfly, Polygonia interrogationis, with a silver mark shaped like a question mark on the underside of its hindwing.

   A question mark landed on the fallen pear and folded its wings, showing the silver mark underneath.

   Question marks turn up along the creek in late summer, feeding on sap and rotting fruit.

   Note

   Field guides often pair it with its close relative the eastern comma, Polygonia comma, and tend to capitalize both names: Question Marks and Commas. The two range from the Gulf Coast to Canada and west to the Rockies, and the caterpillars of the question mark feed on elms, hackberry, hops and nettles.

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