period vs phase

period

noun
  • One or more additional intervals to decide a tied game, an overtime period. 

  • A length of time. 

  • The punctuation mark “.” (indicating the ending of a sentence or marking an abbreviation). 

  • A complete sentence, especially one expressing a single thought or making a balanced, rhythmic whole. 

  • A period of time in history seen as a single coherent entity; an epoch, era. 

  • The length of time during which the same characteristics of a periodic phenomenon recur, such as the repetition of a wave or the rotation of a planet. 

  • An end or conclusion; the final point of a process etc. 

  • A section of an artist's, writer's (etc.) career distinguished by a given quality, preoccupation etc. 

  • A geochronologic unit of millions to tens of millions of years; a subdivision of an era, and subdivided into epochs. 

  • Each of the divisions into which a school day is split, allocated to a given subject or activity. 

  • Each of the intervals, typically three, of which a game is divided. 

  • A Drosophila gene, the gene product of which is involved in regulation of the circadian rhythm. 

  • The length of an interval over which a periodic function, periodic sequence or repeating decimal repeats; often the least such length. 

  • Female menstruation; an episode of this. 

  • A row in the periodic table of the elements. 

  • A decisive end to something; a stop. 

  • Two phrases (an antecedent and a consequent phrase). 

adj
  • Designating anything from a given historical era. 

  • Evoking, or appropriate for, a particular historical period, especially through the use of elaborate costumes and scenery. 

intj
  • That's final; that's the end of the matter (analogous to a period ending a sentence); end of story. 

phase

noun
  • The period of play between consecutive breakdowns. 

  • A component in a material system that is distinguished by chemical composition and/or physical state (solid, liquid or gas) and/or crystal structure. It is delineated from an adjoining phase by an abrupt change in one or more of those conditions. 

  • The arctangent of the quotient formed by dividing the imaginary part of a complex number by the real part. 

  • A distinguishable part of a sequence or cycle occurring over time. 

  • A particular appearance or state in a regularly recurring cycle of changes with respect to quantity of illumination or form, or the absence, of its enlightened disk. Illustrated in Wikipedia's article Lunar phase. 

  • Any one point or portion in a recurring series of changes, as in the changes of motion of one of the particles constituting a wave or vibration; one portion of a series of such changes, in distinction from a contrasted portion, as the portion on one side of a position of equilibrium, in contrast with that on the opposite side. 

  • In certain organisms, one of two or more colour variations characteristic of the species, but independent of the ordinary seasonal and sexual differences, and often also of age. 

  • A haplotype. 

  • That which is exhibited to the eye; the appearance which anything manifests, especially any one among different and varying appearances of the same object. 

  • Any appearance or aspect of an object of mental apprehension or view. 

  • In a polyphase electrical power system, one of the power-carrying conductors, or the alternating current carried by it. 

  • A distortion caused by a difference in the speed of propagation for different frequencies 

verb
  • To determine haplotypes in (data) when genotypes are known. 

  • To begin—if construed with "in"—or to discontinue—if construed with out—(doing) something over a period of time (i.e. in phases). 

  • Antique form of faze. 

  • To pass into or through a solid object. 

  • To use a phaser. 

How often have the words period and phase occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )