Definition, synonyms and related words
plural of period
"She kept track of her menstrual periods by marking them on a calendar app."
In plain English: Periods are the monthly bleeding that happens to people who have started menstruating.
"Many women experience painful periods that make it hard to leave their houses."
Usage: Use periods to refer to menstrual cycles when discussing women's health or biology, but use them to mean punctuation marks only when talking about writing and grammar. Avoid using periods for menstruation in formal medical contexts where the term "menstruation" or "menses" is preferred.
Derived from the Latin perīodum, meaning "a going through," it originally referred to the completion of a full cycle or circuit in astronomy and mathematics before broadening to denote menstruation. The term entered English via Old French, retaining its core sense of a distinct interval marked by an end point.