periodical
Americannoun
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periodicals
plural
adjective
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published at regularly recurring intervals.
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of or relating to such publications.
noun
adjective
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of or relating to such publications
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published at regular intervals
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periodic or occasional
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
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periodicalismnoun
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periodicalistnoun
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periodicalnessnoun
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nonperiodicaladjective
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unperiodicaladjective
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of periodical
First recorded in 1595–1605; periodic 1 + -al 1
Explanation
If your weekend ritual includes reading the Sunday paper from front to back and then comparing stories in the latest celebrity gossip magazines, you appreciate periodicals, publications that come out on a regular basis. The word periodical is related to period, as in a certain length of time. Periodicals are published with regular lengths of time between issues and are described by that length of time, whether it's daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual. They may be meant for a general audience like the ones you find on the magazine stand in the airport, or they may be more specialized for readers with specific interests, such as The Journal of the Society for Penguin Appreciation or Window Washer Gazette.
Vocabulary lists containing periodical
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
An entire notebook is devoted to The Spectator, a daily periodical that ran for 555 issues between 1711 and 1712 commenting on the manners and fads of London society.
From BBC ● Sep. 4, 2025
This trend is seen with periodical comic books too, with only four franchises outside of Marvel and DC able to crack the top 50 comics of 2024.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 28, 2025
This language continued through the 1860s, as evidenced by texts such as pro-slavery advocate J. Quitman Moore’s article in the Southern periodical De Bow’s Review titled “Feudalism in America.”
From Salon ● Nov. 10, 2024
Every time periodical cicadas arrive in the United States, they bring a sense of wonder with them — their long intervals underground and their perfectly timed mass emergences are fascinating, even to experts.
From Seattle Times ● May 13, 2024
The three Fischers, prototypes of Talmudic scholars, were always studying: Joan her textbooks; Regina her medical tomes; and Bobby the latest chess periodical.
From "Endgame" by Frank Brady
We learn that Renoir’s scenes of contemporary life often served as illustrations for books and periodicals, and discover the influence of the requirements of reproduction on his technique.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 20, 2025
Simply put, photographs were still scarce, relatively speaking, but they were on their way to replacing woodblock illustrations in newspapers and periodicals to become the dominant form of visual media.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 5, 2025
For example, the University of Chicago now spends more than $100,000 annually on buying books and periodicals through the Library of Congress field office in Delhi.
From BBC ● Dec. 29, 2024
High-end niche periodicals are popping up, but the trend might be most evident in a burst of small-batch, independent outdoors magazines like Adventure Journal, Mountain Gazette, Summit Journal and Ori.
From New York Times ● Jun. 16, 2024
Supermarket tabloids never provide an end-of-year list of false predictions by psychics, nor do the more upscale New Age periodicals, which, despite a veneer of sophistication, are just as fatuous.
From "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences" by John Allen Paulos
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
