period meaning and definition

PERIOD noun

Definition of period (noun)

1. an amount of time
   • "a time period of 30 years"; "hastened the period of time of his recovery"; "Picasso's blue period"
   • synonyms: period of time, time period
2. the interval taken to complete one cycle of a regularly repeating phenomenon
3. (ice hockey) one of three divisions into which play is divided in hockey games
4. a unit of geological time during which a system of rocks formed
   • "ganoid fishes swarmed during the earlier geological periods"
   • synonyms: geological period
5. the end or completion of something
   • "death put a period to his endeavors"; "a change soon put a period to my tranquility"
6. the monthly discharge of blood from the uterus of nonpregnant women from puberty to menopause
   • "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
   • synonyms: catamenia, flow, menses, menstruation, menstruum
7. a punctuation mark (.) placed at the end of a declarative sentence to indicate a full stop or after abbreviations
   • "in England they call a period a stop"
   • synonyms: full point, full stop, point, stop