period
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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6 characters
Language
English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "period", 6-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "period" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "period" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
period is aEnglishnoun. It means: A length of time. Pronounced /ˈpɪə.ɹi.əd/. It ranks #623 in English word frequency. Often confused with prod and prior.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | period |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| IPA | /ˈpɪə.ɹi.əd/ |
| Letters | 6 |
| Frequency rank | #623 |
| Misspellings tracked | 8 |
| Confusable pairs | 9 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for period is 6 letters long, classified as anoun, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˈpɪə.ɹi.əd/. Corpus data places it at rank #623 in overall English word frequency, putting it firmly in the everyday core of the language.Wiktionary records 20 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 8 documented wrong-spelling variants for period, with forms such as "epriod", "peirod", and "perido". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It also participates in 9 confusable-pair relationships, "prod", "prior", "Perot", and more, where similar look or sound leads writers to substitute one word for another in context.
Etymologically, the entry records: From Middle English periode, from Middle French periode, from Medieval Latin periodus, from Ancient Greek περίοδος (períodos, “circuit, orbit, a recurring interval of time, path around”), from περι- (peri-, “around”) + ὁδός (hodós, “way”). Displaced native … Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is period, spelled P-E-R-I-O-D, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1A length of time.
- 2A length of time in history seen as a single coherent entity; an epoch, era.
- 3The punctuation mark “.” (indicating the ending of a sentence or marking an abbreviation).
- 4A decisive end to something; a stop.
- 5The length of time during which the same characteristics of a periodic phenomenon recur, such as the repetition of a wave or the rotation of a planet.
- 6Female menstruation; an episode of this.
- 7Female menstruation; an episode of this.
- 8A section of an artist's, writer's (etc.) career distinguished by a given quality, preoccupation etc.
- 9Each of the divisions into which a school day is split, allocated to a given subject or activity.
- 10Each of the intervals, typically three, of which a game is divided.
- 11One or more additional intervals to decide a tied game, an overtime period.
- 12The length of time for a disease to run its course.
- 13An end or conclusion; the final point of a process, a state, an event, etc.
- 14A complete sentence, especially one expressing a single thought or making a balanced, rhythmic whole.
- 15A specific moment during a given process; a point, a stage.
- 16A row in the periodic table of the elements.
- 17A geochronologic unit of millions to tens of millions of years; a subdivision of an era, and subdivided into epochs.
- 18A Drosophila gene, the gene product of which is involved in regulation of the circadian rhythm.
- 19Two phrases (an antecedent and a consequent phrase).
- 20The length of an interval over which a periodic function, periodic sequence or repeating decimal repeats; often the least such length.
Etymology
From Middle English periode, from Middle French periode, from Medieval Latin periodus, from Ancient Greek περίοδος (períodos, “circuit, orbit, a recurring interval of time, path around”), from περι- (peri-, “around”) + ὁδός (hodós, “way”). Displaced native Middle English tide (“interval, period, season”), from Old English tīd (“time, period, season”), as well as Middle English elde (“age, period”), from Old English ieldu (“age, period of time”).
Synonyms
Antonyms
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: epriod,peirod,perido,periodd,peroid,perriod,pperiod,preiod
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for period
Misspelling Variants of "period"
Frequency rank: #623 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter P in our English index: