full stop

American

noun

period.

full stop British

noun

Also called (esp US and Canadian): period. the punctuation mark (.) used at the end of a sentence that is not a question or exclamation, after abbreviations, etc

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

full stops

plural

Etymology

Origin of full stop

First recorded in 1590–1600

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:

full stop

"No one should be trespassing full stop but no one should be swimming there at that time of night."

From BBC ● Mar. 5, 2026

These are core financial tenets that should be followed 100% of the time, full stop.

From MarketWatch ● Jan. 9, 2026

Waymo says its cars are designed to come to a full stop.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 3, 2025

In case this wasn’t abundantly clear, Karol G is one of the most commercially, creatively significant artists on the planet, of any genre, full stop.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 1, 2025

They are now accustomed to following a full stop with a lower-case letter and no space.

From "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" by Author

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023