The portion of the intestine that runs from the cecum to the rectum; in some mammals, it may be separated from the small intestine by an ileocecal valve. It is also known as the large intestine. The colon is usually divided into ascending, transverse, and descending portions. In the human a fourth section, the sigmoid, is found. The colon is longer in herbivores and shorter in carnivores, and is about 4 to 6 ft (1.2 to 1.8 m) long in humans. No digestive enzymes are secreted in the colon. Much digestion (for example, all breakdown of cellulose) occurs by bacteria, of which Escherichia coli is the most common. Most of the fluid added to the food during digestion is reabsorbed into the body in the colon. All digestive action, water absorption, and so on, is completed before the food materials pass out of the colon into the rectum. See Digestive system
a city in Panama; a port on Manzanillo Peninsula at the entrance to the Panama Canal on the Caribbean side. The administrative center of Colón Province. Population, 65,600 (1969). It is linked with the city of Panamá by a railroad running along the canal and by a highway. There are banana exports, and the city has an oil refinery. Colón was founded in 1850.
an intonational unit in speech; the utterance between two pauses. It usually coincides with the syntagma, a syntactically linked group of words.
In Russian literary prose, the average length of a colon is two to four fully stressed words; in scientific writing and journalism it is longer. The following is an example of division of speech into cola:. Ia ekhal na perekladnykh iz Tiflisa./Vsia poklazha moei telezhki/sostoiala iz odnogo nebol’shogo chemodana./kotoryi do poloviny/byl nabitputevymi zapiskami o Gruzii/Borshaia chast’ iz nikh, /k schastiiu dlia vas, poteriana,/a chemodan, s ostal’nymi veshchami,/k schastiiu dlia menia, ostalsia tsel.
(I was traveling by post chaise from Tiflis./The entire load on my handcart/consisted of one small suitcase,/which was half/full of notes on Georgia./Most of them,/fortunately for you, were lost/and the suitcase with the rest of the things,/fortunately for me, remained intact. M. Iu. Lermontov,Bêla.)