The most common and most likely answer to this crossword clue is the 5 letter word COMMA
I've seen this crossword clue in Financial Times
C
O
M
M
A
More clues leading to the result COMMA
- Mark sending Mike into unconscious state
- Fellow graduate catching minute butterfly
- Butterfly order with no northern distribution initially
- Butterfly mark
- Mark, actor Mumbai regularly features
- Stop maiden falling into very deep sleep
- Male in unconscious state – this gives pause
- Minute interval caught before bullets getting fired back?
- Text mark in delicate flier
- Communist academic revealing its use may be divisive
Buddy explains!
The straight part
We know that "this gives pause" is the straight/definition part of the clue. The straight part is often a synonym or definition, in this case this gives pause = comma.The cryptic/wordplay part
In cryptic crossword there's often an wordplay/cryptic part as well.This part involves a more complex hint, such as an anagram, homophone, hidden word, etc.
Sadly, We don't have an explanation for this specific crossword clue yet.
What does COMMA mean?
COMMA noun- The punctuation mark ⟨,⟩ used to indicate a set off parts of a sentence or between elements of a list.
- A similar-looking subscript diacritical mark.
- Any of various nymphalid butterflies of the genus Polygonia, having a comma-shaped white mark on the underwings, especially Polygonia c-album and Polygonia c-aureum of North Africa, Europe, and Asia.
- A difference in the calculation of nearly identical intervals by different ways.
- A delimiting marker between items in a genetic sequence.
- In Ancient Greek rhetoric, a short clause, something less than a colon, originally denoted by comma marks. In antiquity it was defined as a combination of words having no more than eight syllables in all. It was later applied to longer phrases, e.g. the Johannine comma.
- A brief interval.
- To place a comma or commas within text; to follow, precede, or surround a portion of text with commas.