period P₃E₁R₁I₁O₁D₂

PERIOD is a familiar six-letter word with several distinct senses: a stretch of time, a historical era, the punctuation mark “.”, or a decisive ending. Its spelling uses six different letters, so rearranging all of them gives DOPIER, the only anagram. The word is included in Collins, NWL2023, and ENABLE.

PERIOD at a glance

• PERIOD has six letters and scores 9 points before any board bonuses.
• P contributes 3 points; D contributes 2, and E, R, I, and O contribute 1 each.
• DOPIER is its sole recorded anagram.
• PERNOD is its only one-letter neighbour: one letter changes while the other five stay in place.
• Its frequency count is 23,158, with a frequency rank of 592.

What does PERIOD mean?

PERIOD most often names a length of time, such as a period of study or a period of change. It can also mean an era treated as one coherent stretch of history. Those uses share the idea of time, but the surrounding words tell you whether the span is ordinary or historical.

The punctuation sense is the mark “.”, used to end a sentence or mark an abbreviation. In a phrase like “That’s the end of it, period,” the word instead means a decisive stop. That last sense is emphatic, not a reference to punctuation on the page.

The word’s frequency count is 23,158, and its rank is 592. Those figures fit its familiar everyday uses; they do not mean every sense fits as a substitute in every sentence. “An era” may replace PERIOD in a history context, but it does not replace the punctuation mark.

How does PERIOD score and change by one letter?

PERIOD’s base Scrabble score is 9: P is worth 3, D is worth 2, and the four remaining tiles are worth 1 apiece. The P supplies a third of the total, so a premium square under that tile changes the score more than a premium square under a one-point tile.

DOPIER uses exactly the same six letters, while PERNOD differs by just one. That makes the anagram a rearrangement clue and the neighbour a substitution clue; they are different ways to connect PERIOD to other playable forms.

The practical limit of the PERIOD meaning is context: its time, punctuation, and emphatic-ending senses are not interchangeable. For a word-game move, check your game’s word list and board premiums rather than treating the everyday meaning as a scoring rule.