colon

The punctuation mark comes from Latin cōlon, meaning a member or clause of a poem, borrowed from Greek κῶλον (kôlon), a limb or part of a verse. The anatomical colon comes from a different Latin word, cŏlon, meaning the large intestine, from Greek κόλον (kólon), which could mean the intestine or simply food and fodder. A third, separate colon — meaning settler — comes from French colon.

The punctuation colon began as a term for a segment of poetic structure before narrowing to the mark that separates clauses. The anatomical colon stayed close to its original Greek sense of the gut, though that Greek word could once also mean food itself.