full stop
1
1.0
- noun
- /fʊl stɑp/
- UK
:
punto
- I do not just mean "when you talk like this," I also mean when people type without putting a capital letter at the start and a full stop at the end, even if their grammar and spelling may be accurate.
Examples
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Now if a sentence ever cried out for a period, that one did—full stop.
Fiction book (2001) -
To quote Geoffrey Leech, the full stop is "the heaviest punctuation mark... the effect of it is to emphasize the autonomy of each piece of information, which is thereby asserted with the maximum force" (217).
Academic text (2005) -
I teach creative writing at the community college level, and I am seeing more and more kids coming out of high school not understanding where to put a full stop, and these are kids who want to write!
Blog text (24) -
Now I need to talk as if I'm ordering cinema tickets, which means you need to put a full stop after every sentences.
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Finally, in his critique, the Cardinal takes great umbrage at the fact that the opening formula of the Gospel passages, "At that time," is separated from the rest of the text by a full stop, rather than a semi-colon, as modern grammar would normally dictate.
Blog text (25) -
Every sentence in her essay must end with a full stop to clearly indicate its conclusion.
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The teacher reminded the students to use a full stop after each sentence in their writing exercises.
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When writing in English, remember that a full stop is necessary to show the end of a statement.
Synonyms
96
1.0
A dot at the end of a sentence to show it ends
9
1.0
The mark you put at the end of a sentence
1
1.0
A small dot used to end a sentence or follow abbreviations
1
1.3
A symbol like a period or comma that separates sentences and shows meaning
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning 'a complete halt' is directly and compositionally derived from 'full' (completely) modifying 'stop' (a halt), so a learner who knows both words can infer a definitive end. This is a regular adjectival + noun composition common across languages and contexts, making the phrase readily predictable for a B1 learner.
Etymology
Full stop is the British name for the small dot placed at the end of a sentence. The name comes from the idea that the dot makes the sentence stop fully, and printers and writers used this mark to show a complete pause, so in American English it is called 'period'.