guillemet

English

WOTD – 26 September 2009    

Wikipedia

Etymology

From French guillemet, diminutive form of the name Guillaume (“William”), after the French typecutter Guillaume Le Bé (1525–1598) who supposedly invented the marks.

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ˌɡi.(j)ə.ˈme(ɪ)/ or IPA: /ˈgɪl.ə.ˌmɛt/
• (French) IPA: /ɡij.mɛ/ or IPA: /ɡi.jə.mɛ/ (the /ə/ may be either an epenthetic schwa or a full vowel)

Noun

guillemet (plural guillemets)

1. Either of the punctuation marks « or », used in several languages to indicate passages of speech. Similar to typical quotation marks used in the English language such as “ and ”.

Synonyms

• angle quote
• chevron (Typography)
• duckfoot quote
• double angle quotation mark (Unicode name)

Translations

A guillemet

• Armenian: չակերտ (hy) (čakert)
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 書名號 (cmn), 书名号 (cmn) (shūmínghào), symbols: 《 and 》, 〈 and 〉

• Finnish: kulmalainausmerkki (fi)
• French: guillemet (fr) m
• German: Guillemet (de) m and n
• Greek: εισαγωγικό (el) (eisagogikó) n, εισαγωγικά (el) (eisagogiká) n pl
• Irish: Liamóg (ga)

• Japanese: ギュメ (ja) (gyume), symbols: 《 and 》, 〈 and 〉
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: sjevron (nb) m

  Nynorsk: sjevron (nn) m

• Persian: گیومه (fa) (giyume)
• Russian: кавы́чка (ru) (kavýčka) f
• Spanish: comillas (es)

References

---

French

Pronunciation

• IPA: /ɡij.mɛ/, X-SAMPA: /gij.mE/

• Audio

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɛ
• Homophone: guillemets

Noun

guillemet m (plural guillemets)

1. quotation mark
2. guillemet

Usage notes

In French, a space is put after the opening guillemet and before the closing one.