Meaning of period in English

period

noun [ C ]

/ˈpɪr.i.əd/ uk

/ˈpɪə.ri.əd/

period noun [C] (TIME)

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a length of time:

Her work means that she spends long periods away from home.

in a period Unemployment in the first half of the year was 2.5 percent lower than in the same period the year before.

over a period of 15 people were killed in a period of four days.

in a period of In a period of two years, there have been five sets of redundancies.

over a period The study will be carried out over a six-month period.

a fixed time during the life of a person or in history:

Most teenagers go through a rebellious period.

The house was built during the Elizabethan period.

in school, a division of time in the day when a subject is taught:

We have six periods of science a week.

double period Many schools have reduced or eliminated music classes to provide double periods of math and English.

one of the fixed times that a sports game is divided into, especially in hockey (= a team game played on ice, with curved sticks and a small disc):

The game was won and lost in the first period, when the Eagles fell six goals behind.

In the second period he scored by banking the puck off the right post and into the net.

More examplesFewer examples

Her time at university was the most eventful period of her life.
He was one of the most important writers of that period.
The war was followed by a long period of peace and prosperity.
The 1990s were a period of rapid change.
The police are carrying out spot checks on drivers over the Christmas period to test for alcohol levels.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Periods of time - general words

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You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Stages & phases

Stages of life

Classes & courses

Hockey

period noun [C] (BLOOD)

the process of blood coming from the uterus (= the organ in which a baby develops before birth), which usually happens once a month when someone is not pregnant:

period pains

She'd missed a period and was worried.

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Obstetrics: processes & stages connected with sexual reproduction

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period noun [C] (MARK)

mainly US

(UK usually full stop)

the symbol . used in writing at the end of a sentence or at the end of the short form of a word

mainly US

said at the end of a statement to show that you believe you have said all there is to say on a subject and you are not going to discuss it anymore:

There will be no more shouting, period!

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Punctuation

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Linguistics: interjections

period

adjective [ before noun ]

/ˈpɪr.i.əd/ uk

/ˈpɪə.ri.əd/

used to describe clothes, furniture, and other things from a particular time in history:

period dress They performed "Julius Caesar" in period dress.

period furniture The house, with its period furniture, is in demand as a movie location.

The movie is very impressive in its period detail.

Recordings of period music are now widely available, much of it performed on authentic period instruments.

See also

period costume
period drama
period piece

SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases

Old or old-fashioned

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(Definition of period from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

period | Intermediate English

period

noun [ C ]

/ˈpɪər·i·əd/

period noun [C] (TIME)

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a length of time:

The study will be carried out over a six-month period.

A period in the life of a person or in history is a particular time during that life or history:

The period after World War II was marked by rapid economic growth.

A period is a division of time in an event of fixed length, such as a day at school or a game:

There was no scoring in the second period.

physics

A period is the time it takes for one complete repetition of a pattern that repeats. A second is used as the standard unit in most areas of science.

Period costume/dress/furniture is the clothing or furniture of a particular time in history:

At the Revolutionary War theme park, everyone was wearing period costumes.

period noun [C] (MARK)

a mark (.) used in writing to show where the end of a sentence is, or to show that the letters before it are an abbreviation (= short word form)

infml You can say period at the end of a statement as a way of adding emphasis:

There will be no more shouting, period!

period noun [C] (BLEEDING)

(also menstrual period, us/ˈmen·strəlˌpɪr·i·əd, -strə·wəl-/)

the bleeding from a woman’s uterus that happens approximately every four weeks when she is not pregnant

period noun [C] (REPEATED EVENT)

science

the time needed to complete a regularly repeating event or series of events

period noun [C] (ROW)

chemistry

any of the rows in the periodic table of chemical elements

(Definition of period from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

period | Business English

period

noun [ C ]

/ˈpɪəriəd/ us

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a length of time:

a period of six months/10 years, etc. This debt is repayable over a period of five years in equal quarterly instalments.

Profit fell 75.1% from the same period a year ago.

The Government will make an additional 10% contribution for a limited period.

The second quarter of the year should have been a busy period.

Examples of period

period

It makes for a period of questioning and a time of change.

From ABC News

To better understand what may be going on, the researchers collected and studied satellite data from the period 1982 through 2008.

From Phys.Org

The problem is the people who use these drugs for recreational use period.

From CNN

He wanted to get married, after a reasonable dating period, of course.

From Slate Magazine

The order went into a period of self-examination.

From NOLA.com

Every photographer is an artist and every photograph is art, period.

From The Verge

There's no way to know how many wills there are, period.

From TIME

Because of the localized hormones, many women with this device find they no longer have periods.

From New York Daily News

During time period of the book, the author grows up.

From Huffington Post

Some users checked their phones 900 times in a 12-hour period.

From NPR

Standard economic theory does not believe in a world in which demand is a problem except possibly for short periods of time during recessions.

From Huffington Post

They had to take anti-rejection drugs for a short period so their eyes wouldn't reject the foreign tissue.

From CNN

Over what period of time are we talking about?

From Huffington Post

That one hour period probably saved me another month of stress.

From The Atlantic

In spanning such a long period, the film also takes a look at the changing culture.

From Los Angeles Times

These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.

Collocations with period

period

These are words often used in combination with period.

Click on a collocation to see more examples of it.

baroque period

It is as if the baroque period sought to liberate the singularity of classification of knowledge enforced by the architecture of the library to allow a plurality of correspondences.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

baseline period

The first period is the baseline period in the model.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

brief period

That it once enjoyed a brief period of genuine popularity may encourage an affirmative answer.

From the Cambridge English Corpus

See all collocations with period

What is the pronunciation of period?