period
pronunciation
How to pronounce period in British English:
UK [ˈpɪəriəd]
How to pronounce period in American English:
US [ˈpɪriəd]
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- Noun:
- an amount of time
- one of three periods of play in hockey games
- a stage in the history of a culture having a definable place in space and time
- the interval taken to complete one cycle of a regularly repeating phenomenon
- the monthly discharge of blood from the uterus of nonpregnant women from puberty to menopause
- a punctuation mark (.) placed at the end of a declarative sentence to indicate a full stop or after abbreviations
- a unit of geological time during which a system of rocks formed
- the end or completion of something
Word Origin
- period
- period: [14] Period means etymologically ‘going round’. It comes via Old French periode and Latin periodus from Greek períodos, a compound noun formed from the prefix perí- ‘round’ and hódos ‘way’ (source also of English episode, exodus [17], and method). The main sense of the word in modern English, ‘interval of time’ (which first emerged in post-classical Latin), comes from the notion of a ‘repeated cycle of events’ (now more obvious in the derivative periodical [17]).=> episode, exodus, method
- period (n.)
- early 15c., "course or extent of time," from Middle French periode (14c.) and directly from Medieval Latin periodus "recurring portion, cycle," from Latin periodus "a complete sentence," also "cycle of the Greek games," from Greek periodos "cycle, circuit, period of time," literally "a going around," from peri- "around" (see peri-) + hodos "a going, way, journey" (see cede). Sense of "repeated cycle of events" led to that of "interval of time." Meaning "dot marking end of a sentence" first recorded c. 1600, from similar use in Medieval Latin (in late 16c. English it meant "full pause at the end of a sentence"). Sense of "menstruation" dates from 1822. Educational sense of "portion of time set apart for a lesson" is from 1876. Sporting sense attested from 1898. As an adjective from 1905; period piece attested from 1911.
Example
- 1. Maybe better than any other financial firm , period .
- 2. Amazon may be heading into a period of slower revenue growth and higher capital spending .
- 3. In the same period the s & p returned 88 % . "
- 4. This is a period of four or five years .
- 5. Many watchdog timers have a maximum period of around two seconds .