Re: Period vs Full Stop

[Ross Clark]

On 22/10/2020 5:10 p.m., Steve Hayes wrote:
> I had been led to believe that "full stop" was British usage, while
> "period" was US usage.
>
> The following news item from the Carlisle Journal of 03 Sep 1814 seems
> to suggest otherwise:
>
> "On Wednesday last, at Tarnside, near Wigton, a person of the name of
> Gavin HOW, put a period to his existence by suspending himself with a
> rope."
>
> Comments?

The meaning of "period" here is "end, conclusion", documented from the
16th century on. "Put a period to", is thus "put an end to", as in

1601 R. Johnson in tr. G. Botero Trauellers Breuiat sig. A2v I put a
period to these lines.

1676 M. Hale Contempl. Moral & Divine i. 52 A little..accident..may
put a period to all those pleasures..in an unthought of moment.

The punctuation mark is so called from about the same time (Mulcaster,
1582); the pondian split (OED: "Now chiefly North American") comes later.

[Dingbat]

8. A point or portion of time at which something is ended; a completion
or conclusion.
<https://www.thefreedictionary.com/period>
Is there any analysis of how period came to imply an ending?
A period is typically a time interval as in "antebellum period".

As a single word sentence, it intensifies the preceding sentence.
<https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Period>
That too seems to have an air of finality.
It might be peculiar to US English though.
It's also spelled as <periodt>.
https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/periodt/

[Paul Wolff]

On Wed, 21 Oct 2020, at 22:15:24, Dingbat posted:

>On Thursday, October 22, 2020 at 9:54:40 AM UTC+5:30, Ross wrote:
>> On 22/10/2020 5:10 p.m., Steve Hayes wrote:
>> > I had been led to believe that "full stop" was British usage, while
>> > "period" was US usage.
>> >
>> > The following news item from the Carlisle Journal of 03 Sep 1814 seems
>> > to suggest otherwise:
>> >
>> > "On Wednesday last, at Tarnside, near Wigton, a person of the name of
>> > Gavin HOW, put a period to his existence by suspending himself with a
>> > rope."
>> >
>> > Comments?
>>
>> The meaning of "period" here is "end, conclusion", documented from the
>> 16th century on. "Put a period to", is thus "put an end to", as in
>>
>> 1601 R. Johnson in tr. G. Botero Trauellers Breuiat sig. A2v I put a
>> period to these lines.
>>
>> 1676 M. Hale Contempl. Moral & Divine i. 52 A little..accident..may
>> put a period to all those pleasures..in an unthought of moment.
>>
>> The punctuation mark is so called from about the same time (Mulcaster,
>> 1582); the pondian split (OED: "Now chiefly North American") comes later.
>
>8. A point or portion of time at which something is ended; a completion
> or conclusion.
><https://www.thefreedictionary.com/period>
>Is there any analysis of how period came to imply an ending?
>A period is typically a time interval as in "antebellum period".
>

In some senses, an epoch marks the start of a period, and a period marks
the end of an epoch. A nice symmetry there.
--
Paul

[Ross Clark]

On 22/10/2020 6:15 p.m., Dingbat wrote:
> On Thursday, October 22, 2020 at 9:54:40 AM UTC+5:30, Ross wrote:
>> On 22/10/2020 5:10 p.m., Steve Hayes wrote:
>>> I had been led to believe that "full stop" was British usage, while
>>> "period" was US usage.
>>>
>>> The following news item from the Carlisle Journal of 03 Sep 1814 seems
>>> to suggest otherwise:
>>>
>>> "On Wednesday last, at Tarnside, near Wigton, a person of the name of
>>> Gavin HOW, put a period to his existence by suspending himself with a
>>> rope."
>>>
>>> Comments?
>>
>> The meaning of "period" here is "end, conclusion", documented from the
>> 16th century on. "Put a period to", is thus "put an end to", as in
>>
>> 1601 R. Johnson in tr. G. Botero Trauellers Breuiat sig. A2v I put a
>> period to these lines.
>>
>> 1676 M. Hale Contempl. Moral & Divine i. 52 A little..accident..may
>> put a period to all those pleasures..in an unthought of moment.
>>
>> The punctuation mark is so called from about the same time (Mulcaster,
>> 1582); the pondian split (OED: "Now chiefly North American") comes later.
>
> 8. A point or portion of time at which something is ended; a completion
> or conclusion.
> <https://www.thefreedictionary.com/period>
> Is there any analysis of how period came to imply an ending?
> A period is typically a time interval as in "antebellum period".

Yes. Greek peri-odos 'going around', esp. a cyclical recurrent stretch
of time, as the course of the sun; also (the earliest attested in
English) phases in the progression of a disease; historical periods and
more general intervals of time, but always ones that have a beginning
and ending.

To get from that to "end", maybe think of 11a. the final stage of a
process...a concluding sentence, peroration, summing up. This is
something that marks off a period -- the end of one, the beginning of
another.

That's the best I can do to suggest a logical progression. In actual
chronology, they appear in English at roughly the same time. Perhaps
this indicates that they have been borrowed from one or more languages
where these steps have taken place sequentially. Or maybe the steps are
so natural that they don't require long evolution.

OED says periodus was already used for "complete sentence" in Classical
Latin; but I haven't seen any indication that the punctuation mark has
that name in any language other than English.

>
> As a single word sentence, it intensifies the preceding sentence.
> <https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Period>
> That too seems to have an air of finality.
> It might be peculiar to US English though.
> It's also spelled as <periodt>.
> https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/periodt/

I'm pretty sure that one derives from the punctuation.

[Peter T. Daniels]

On Thursday, October 22, 2020 at 6:36:34 AM UTC-4, Ross wrote:
> On 22/10/2020 6:15 p.m., Dingbat wrote:

> > Is there any analysis of how period came to imply an ending?
> > A period is typically a time interval as in "antebellum period".
>
> Yes. Greek peri-odos 'going around', esp. a cyclical recurrent stretch
> of time, as the course of the sun; also (the earliest attested in
> English) phases in the progression of a disease; historical periods and
> more general intervals of time, but always ones that have a beginning
> and ending.
>
> To get from that to "end", maybe think of 11a. the final stage of a
> process...a concluding sentence, peroration, summing up. This is
> something that marks off a period -- the end of one, the beginning of
> another.
>
> That's the best I can do to suggest a logical progression. In actual
> chronology, they appear in English at roughly the same time. Perhaps
> this indicates that they have been borrowed from one or more languages
> where these steps have taken place sequentially. Or maybe the steps are
> so natural that they don't require long evolution.
>
> OED says periodus was already used for "complete sentence" in Classical
> Latin; but I haven't seen any indication that the punctuation mark has
> that name in any language other than English.

But also, the period of a cycle is the duration of one episode of it.

[bebe...@aol.com]

This may be simplistic, but M-W says:

---
2a(1): an utterance from one full stop to another : SENTENCE

and

3a: the full pause with which the utterance of a sentence closes

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/period
---

It could therefore just be a typical instance of metonymy.

[Anton Shepelev]

Steve Hayes:

> I had been led to believe that "full stop" was British us-

> age, while "period" was US usage.
>
> The following news item from the Carlisle Journal of 03
> Sep 1814 seems to suggest otherwise:
>
> "On Wednesday last, at Tarnside, near Wigton, a person of
> the name of Gavin HOW, put a period to his existence by
> suspending himself with a rope."

And here a example from Nathaniel Hawthorne:

Look next into the street, where we have an amusing par-
allel to the combat of those fancied demons in the upper
regions. It is a snow-battle of schoolboys. What a pretty
satire on war and military glory might be written in the
form of a child's story by describing the snow-ball
fights of two rival schools, the alternate defeats and
victories of each, and the final triumph of one party, or
perhaps of neither! What pitched battles worthy to be
chanted in Homeric strains! What storming of fortresses
built all of massive snow-blocks! What feats of individu-
al prowess and embodied onsets of martial enthusiasm! And
when some well-contested and decisive victory had put a
period to the war, both armies should unite to build a
lofty monument of snow upon the battlefield and crown it
with the victor's statue hewn of the same frozen marble.

--
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[Richard Heathfield]

On 22/09/2021 09:33, Anton Shepelev wrote:
> Steve Hayes:
>
>> I had been led to believe that "full stop" was British us-
>> age, while "period" was US usage.
>>
>> The following news item from the Carlisle Journal of 03
>> Sep 1814 seems to suggest otherwise:
>>
>> "On Wednesday last, at Tarnside, near Wigton, a person of
>> the name of Gavin HOW, put a period to his existence by
>> suspending himself with a rope."

The journalist is clearly an American on secondment.

> And here a example from Nathaniel Hawthorne:

Born and bred in Massachusetts.

--
Richard Heathfield
Email: rjh at cpax dot org dot uk
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