period Meaning, Definition & Usage

  1. noun an amount of time
    period of time; time period.
    • a time period of 30 years
    • hastened the period of time of his recovery
    • Picasso's blue period
  2. noun the interval taken to complete one cycle of a regularly repeating phenomenon
  3. noun (ice hockey) one of three divisions into which play is divided in hockey games
  4. noun a unit of geological time during which a system of rocks formed
    geological period.
    • ganoid fishes swarmed during the earlier geological periods
  5. noun the end or completion of something
    • death put a period to his endeavors
    • a change soon put a period to my tranquility
  6. noun the monthly discharge of blood from the uterus of nonpregnant women from puberty to menopause
    menstruation; flow; menstruum; menses; catamenia.
    • the women were sickly and subject to excessive menstruation
    • a woman does not take the gout unless her menses be stopped"--Hippocrates
    • the semen begins to appear in males and to be emitted at the same time of life that the catamenia begin to flow in females"--Aristotle
  7. noun a punctuation mark (.) placed at the end of a declarative sentence to indicate a full stop or after abbreviations
    full point; full stop; stop; point.
    • in England they call a period a stop

WordNet

Pe"ri*od noun
Etymology
L. periodus, Gr. a going round, a way round, a circumference, a period of time; round, about + a way: cf. F. période.
Definitions
  1. A portion of time as limited and determined by some recurring phenomenon, as by the completion of a revolution of one of the heavenly bodies; a division of time, as a series of years, months, or days, in which something is completed, and ready to recommence and go on in the same order; as, the period of the sun, or the earth, or a comet.
  2. Hence: A stated and recurring interval of time; more generally, an interval of time specified or left indefinite; a certain series of years, months, days, or the like; a time; a cycle; an age; an epoch; as, the period of the Roman republic.
    How by art to make plants more lasting than their ordinary period. Bacon.
  3. (Geol.) One of the great divisions of geological time; as, the Tertiary period; the Glacial period. See the Chart of Geology.
  4. The termination or completion of a revolution, cycle, series of events, single event, or act; hence, a limit; a bound; an end; a conclusion. Bacon.
    So spake the archangel Michael; then paused, As at the world's great period. Milton.
    Evils which shall never end till eternity hath a period. Jer. Taylor.
    This is the period of my ambition. Shak.
  5. (Rhet.) A complete sentence, from one full stop to another; esp., a well-proportioned, harmonious sentence. "Devolved his rounded periods." Tennyson.
    Periods are beautiful when they are not too long. B. Johnson.
    ✍ The period, according to Heyse, is a compound sentence consisting of a protasis and apodosis; according to Becker, it is the appropriate form for the coördinate propositions related by antithesis or causality. Gibbs.
  6. (Print.) The punctuation point [.] that marks the end of a complete sentence, or of an abbreviated word.
  7. (Math.) One of several similar sets of figures or terms usually marked by points or commas placed at regular intervals, as in numeration, in the extraction of roots, and in circulating decimals.
  8. (Med.) The time of the exacerbation and remission of a disease, or of the paroxysm and intermission.
  9. (Mus.) A complete musical sentence. Syn. -- Time; date; epoch; era; age; duration; limit; bound; end; conclusion; determination.
Pe"ri*od transitive verb
Definitions
  1. To put an end to. Obs. Shak.
Pe"ri*od intransitive verb
Definitions
  1. To come to a period; to conclude. Obs. "You may period upon this, that," etc. Felthman.

Webster 1913