It's called a full stop, damnit. A period is the time between events of a recurring phenomenon. Where did "period" come from to describe a full stop? They're all out to confuse me.
Phrases like "Captain Picard is the best Enterprise captain. Period." got translated into my head as "the history of the Earth can be divided into the Cretaceous, Triassic, Jurassic and Captain Picard is the best Enterprise captain periods."
Because the word period has many meanings one of which is "termination" ("death put a period to his endeavors"; "a change soon put a period to my tranquility"*) so it's being substituted in for "full stop."
*from dictionary.com which also supplied:
Word History: Many may have wondered why the word period has the sense “punctuation mark (.)” as well as several senses having to do with time. The answer to this question lies in one of the senses of the Greek word periodos from which our word is descended. Periodos, made up of peri-, “around,” and hodos, “way,” in addition to meaning such things as “going around, way around, going around in a circle, circuit,” and with regard to time, “cycle or period of time,” referred in rhetoric to “a group of words organically related in grammar and sense.” The Greek word was adopted into Latin as perihodos, which in the Medieval Latin period acquired a new sense related to its use in rhetoric, “a punctuation mark used at the end of a rhetorical period.” This sense is not recorded in English until 1609, but the word had already entered English as a borrowing from Old French in the sense “a cycle of recurrence of a disease,” first being recorded in a work written around 1425.
Because the word period has many meanings one of which is "termination" ("death put a period to his endeavors"; "a change soon put a period to my tranquility"*) so it's being substituted in for "full stop."
I have to admit, I have never heard any of those uses for period in England or Ireland, ever. Ok, I'm not the most widely-read person on the planet, though I'm pretty deeply-read (Y'know, like I read lots and lots and lots, but it's all fantasy :) ) so it's possible it's just me. But I think it's equally possible it's just an American-ism. Now this doesn't stop it being an archaic form formally used in England, as an awful lot of American-English oddities we laugh at are simply common 17th century forms of English, or just ones that evolved differently from the same root as their British-English counterparts.
Hey, I told British friends recently about the horrible haircut I had in 1972, and I accidentally called it by its American name. Shag. A shag haircut. Oh, the shocked faces, then the laughter! :) (I have no idea what that haircut was called over here. :) But then I'm told the Irish call the hair that hangs down on my forehead bangs, like Americans do, instead of fringe. Is that true?
Oh well. A hairdresser told me that. It was after I'd first moved here and needed a haircut. I'd accidentally used an Americanism -- bangs. But she told me she knew what it meant because she had an Irish client who used the same term. She thought it was an Irish term also. So, is it fringe in Ireland also? (I am now fairly bilingual in both British and American English. :)
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You actually thing the english language holds logic?
;)
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It's an American thing...
Phrases like "Captain Picard is the best Enterprise captain. Period." got translated into my head as "the history of the Earth can be divided into the Cretaceous, Triassic, Jurassic and Captain Picard is the best Enterprise captain periods."
And despite that, I still got an A1 in geography.
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*from dictionary.com which also supplied:
Word History: Many may have wondered why the word period has the sense “punctuation mark (.)” as well as several senses having to do with time. The answer to this question lies in one of the senses of the Greek word periodos from which our word is descended. Periodos, made up of peri-, “around,” and hodos, “way,” in addition to meaning such things as “going around, way around, going around in a circle, circuit,” and with regard to time, “cycle or period of time,” referred in rhetoric to “a group of words organically related in grammar and sense.” The Greek word was adopted into Latin as perihodos, which in the Medieval Latin period acquired a new sense related to its use in rhetoric, “a punctuation mark used at the end of a rhetorical period.” This sense is not recorded in English until 1609, but the word had already entered English as a borrowing from Old French in the sense “a cycle of recurrence of a disease,” first being recorded in a work written around 1425.
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I have to admit, I have never heard any of those uses for period in England or Ireland, ever. Ok, I'm not the most widely-read person on the planet, though I'm pretty deeply-read (Y'know, like I read lots and lots and lots, but it's all fantasy :) ) so it's possible it's just me. But I think it's equally possible it's just an American-ism. Now this doesn't stop it being an archaic form formally used in England, as an awful lot of American-English oddities we laugh at are simply common 17th century forms of English, or just ones that evolved differently from the same root as their British-English counterparts.
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But then I'm told the Irish call the hair that hangs down on my forehead bangs, like Americans do, instead of fringe. Is that true?
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