periods

Noun

period (plural periods)

1. A length of time.
   • There was a period of confusion following the announcement.
2. A length of time in history seen as a single coherent entity; an epoch, era.
   • Food rationing continued in the post-war period.

   Synonyms:

   vintage

3. (Canada, Philippines, US) The punctuation mark “.” (indicating the ending of a sentence or marking an abbreviation).
   • ‘You know, a period? The black spot at the end of a sentence — what do you call them over there?’2002, Zadie Smith, The Autograph Man, Penguin Books (2003), page 299

   Synonyms:

   point, full stop, dot, full-point, plain point

4. (figuratively) A decisive end to something; a stop.
   • My sufferings, physical and mental, are more than I can bear, and when such small arrangements as I have to make for your future well-being are completed it is my intention to put a period to them.1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC
5. The length of time during which the same characteristics of a periodic phenomenon recur, such as the repetition of a wave or the rotation of a planet.
6. (euphemistic) Female menstruation; an episode of this.
   • When she is on her period, she prefers not to go swimming.

See all 27 meanings of period