Word.ws English Dictionary

middle dot

middle dot noun: synonym of interpunct ⟨·⟩.

Noun

middle dot (plural middle dots)

  1. Synonym of interpunct ⟨·⟩.
    Synonyms:
    interpunct
  2. Synonym of middle point ⟨⸳⟩.
    • The Greek manuscripts of later date show a system more like that now employed. About the ninth century the comma appears to denote the slight pause, while the high dot (·) indicates a colon or semicolon, and the full stop is denoted by a larger dot or double dot and a space. A little later the...1930, Frank Moore Colby, Talcott Williams, The New International Encyclopaedia, volume 19, Dodd, Mead and Company, page 374
    • At the end of a complete sentence (Latin periodus), the speaker paused to take on air, and that pause was sometimes indicated with a high dot ·. A speaker might also pause when he had covered a large portion of a sentence − a member; in Latin this was a colon, the same word used for the “great...1963, David Mellinkoff, The Language of the Law, Little, Brown and Company
    Synonyms:
    middle point

Examples of middle dot in a sentence

  • The Latin grammarians adopted the punctuation by dots from the Greeks, but seemingly modified the system slightly so as to give the middle dot the middle value and the lower the smallest.1930, Frank Moore Colby, Talcott Williams, The New International Encyclopaedia, volume 19, Dodd, Mead and Company, page 374:
  • A shorter division of a periodus was a comma, and the pause to catch the breath after a comma was sometimes shown in writing by a middle dot ⸳.1963, David Mellinkoff, The Language of the Law, Little, Brown and Company:

Synonyms of middle dot

Forms of middle dot

pluralmiddle dots

Questions about middle dot

What does middle dot mean?
Middle dot means synonym of interpunct ⟨·⟩.
How do you use middle dot in a sentence?
The Latin grammarians adopted the punctuation by dots from the Greeks, but seemingly modified the system slightly so as to give the middle dot the middle value and the lower the smallest.
What part of speech is middle dot?
Middle dot is a noun.
What is the plural of middle dot?
The plural of middle dot is middle dots.

Words near middle dot in the dictionary

  1. Middle Czech
  2. Middle Danish
  3. middle day
  4. middle distance
  5. middle distances
  6. middle dot
  7. middle dots
  8. Middle Dural
  9. Middle Dutch
  10. middle ear
  11. middle ears

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: middle dot (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “middle dot.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/middle_dot. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.