the warmest season of the year; in the northern hemisphere it extends from the summer solstice to the autumnal equinox; "they spent a lazy summer at the shore"
a punctuation mark (.) placed at the end of a declarative sentence to indicate a full stop or after abbreviations; "in England they call a period a stop"
the end or completion of something; "death put a period to his endeavors"; "a change soon put a period to my tranquility"
a unit of geological time during which a system of rocks formed; "ganoid fishes swarmed during the earlier geological periods"
one of three periods of play in hockey games
the interval taken to complete one cycle of a regularly repeating phenomenon
a stage in the history of a culture having a definable place in space and time; "a novel from the Victorian period"
the service (electric power or water or transportation) provided by a public utility; "the cost of utilities never decreases"; "all the utilities were lost after the hurricane"
a facility composed of one or more pieces of equipment connected to or part of a structure and designed to provide a service such as heat or electricity or water or sewage disposal; "the price of the house included all utilities"
the quality of being of practical use
a company that performs a public service; subject to government regulation
(economics) a measure that is to be maximized in any situation involving choice
having or showing vigorous vegetal or animal life; "flourishing crops"; "flourishing chicks"; "a growing boy"; "fast-growing weeds"; "a thriving deer population"
operating with minimal human intervention; independent of external control; "automatic transmission"; "a budget deficit that caused automatic spending cuts"
like the unthinking functioning of a machine; "an automatic `thank you'"; "machinelike efficiency"
without volition or conscious control; "the automatic shrinking of the pupils of the eye in strong light"; "a reflex knee jerk"; "sneezing is reflexive"