question mark
15
1.0
- noun
- /ˈkwɛsʧən mɑrk/
:
signo de interrogación
- She added a question mark to the end of her sentence to clarify that she was asking.
Please keep your questions short and questions end with a question mark.
- Please keep your questions short and questions end with a question mark.
- What the, what the fuck is that a question mark?
- Me and Greg, it's a* We going to put a question mark in there.
Examples
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Is that a question mark with some variable like X?
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Now Venezuela, I probably should have put a question mark there as well because the democratic system is being dismantled.
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This is a big question mark.
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Wherever a question is asked, a question mark must be used at the end of it.
Blog text (27) -
Something told me the future of my relationship with Tom Schulz was once again a question mark.
Fiction book (1993) -
And in his heart, in a hollowed-out place, stood a question mark: was it possible to write another play?
Fiction book (2002) -
But this team, they pose so many threats and they posed so many question marks for your team.
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It threw a question mark over everything.
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"Sidebar RULE #2: Use a question mark at the end of sentences that ask questions."
Fiction book (2002) -
In his notebook, Hughes saw he had written the word "psychic," followed by a question mark.
Fiction book (1995)
Synonyms
A punctuation mark shaped like ? used at the end of a question
The mark ? used at the end of a sentence to show a question
How Emphatic
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'the punctuation symbol indicating a direct question' is directly compositional from 'question' (a request for information) + 'mark' (a symbol), so a learner who knows both words can infer it denotes the symbol used for questions. This noun+noun compounding is common in English and has clear parallels in other languages, making the expression immediately understandable to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Question mark may come from a long-ago short form qo for the Latin word for 'question', where writers put a small q above an o. Over time those two signs joined into a curved line and a dot, and the shape became the sign we put at the end of a sentence to show it is a 'question'.