Hypertext Webster Gateway: "period"
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) (web1913)
Period \Pe"ri*od\, v. t.
To put an end to. [Obs.] --Shak.
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) (web1913)
Period \Pe"ri*od\, v. i.
To come to a period; to conclude. [Obs.] ``You may period
upon this, that,'' etc. --Felthman.
From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) (web1913)
Period \Pe"ri*od\, n. [L. periodus, Gr. ? a going round, a way
round, a circumference, a period of time; ? round, about + ?
a way: cf. F. p['e]riode.]
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.
Note: 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
co["o]rdinate 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.
From WordNet (r) 1.7 (wn)
period
n 1: an amount of time; "a time period of 30 years"; "hastened
the period of his recovery" [syn: {time period}, {period
of time}]
2: one of three periods of play in hockey games
3: a stage in the history of a culture having a definable place
in space and time; "a novel from the Victorian period"
[syn: {historic period}, {historical period}]
4: the interval taken to complete one cycle of a regularly
repeating phenomenon
5: a time of life characterized as a distinct phase; "Picasso's
blue period"; "it was the happy period of my life"
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 [syn: {menstruation},
{menses}, {catamenia}, {flow}]
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" [syn: {point}, {full
stop}, {stop}, {full point}]
8: a unit of geological time during which a system of rocks
formed; "ganoid fishes swarmed during the earlier
geological periods" [syn: {geological period}]
9: the end or completion of something; "death put a period to
his endeavors"; "a change soon put a period to my
tranquility"
Additional Hypertext Webster Gateway Lookup
Gateway by dict@stokkie.net
stock only wrote the gateway and does not have any control over the contents;
see the Webster Gateway FAQ,
and also the Back-end/database links and credits.