Period

How to spell period

6 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce period

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does period mean?

1. nounA length or portion of time, especially one with a defined beginning and end.
2. nounThe punctuation mark that ends a declarative sentence, known in Britain as a full stop.
3. nounA scheduled division of the school or working day given over to a single activity or lesson.
4. nounThe monthly discharge of blood and tissue from the lining of the uterus.

Period in a sentence

• The warranty covers a period of three years.

• He forgot to put a period at the end of the sentence.

• History is taught in the third period each morning.

• Cramps often accompany the first day of her period.

• Sales rose sharply over the holiday period.

• A comma splice happens when two clauses meet without a period.

Where does period come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek periodos, which combined peri, meaning 'around', with hodos, meaning 'way' or 'path', so the literal sense was 'a going around' or 'a circuit'. The Greeks used it for a cycle of recurring events and also for a complete, well rounded sentence in rhetoric. It passed into Latin as periodus and then into French as periode before reaching English in the fifteenth century. The original notion of a circuit gradually broadened into the modern idea of a stretch or interval of time, and the rhetorical sense of a finished sentence is what later gave the American name for the dot that closes one. The same Greek hodos 'way' hides inside several other English words, such as 'method' (a way after, peri's cousin meta) and 'exodus' (a way out).

How the word is built

• peri- (around)
• -od (from Greek hodos: way, path)