In many posts on the SDMB people say something like “He’s a con artist. Period.” What does “Period” mean?
it means “end of argument”
i’m wondering whether you are english (like me) - because “Period” is what those damned ex-colonials on the other side of the pond call a “full-stop”.
Barbarians. 
That’s it. Period. No arguments. Period.
Emphasises finality. Period.
Unless your British. Full stop.
Umm…you’re that is.
Unfortunately more and more of the younger generation are using “period” in this way as, simply, they have no idea of where the phrase comes from.
Always makes me think of Victor Borge, though.
Just to state the obvious, that little dot at the end of a sentence is a period, so that’s what this refers to.
If I had to provide an exact substitute, I would say, “There’s nothing further to say.”
It isn’t “obvious” as not all English-speaking countries call it a period. As was mentioned above, in the UK it is called a “Full Stop”.
I want to ever so subtley disagree with the explanations given thusfar. I would say that “period” does not mean “end of argument” as much as it means “without qualifications.”
To use an example, when someone says “Brenda is the best player on the team. Period.” they are not saying she is the best female player, or the best player who showed up to practice today, or the best batter, or anything else that might be added to the statement to water it down.
Picky…picky…picky…
Well to me as a female Brit a period is something that happens once a month and I don’t want to think about it the rest of the time, so it always seems a bit squicky to hear Americans use the word the way they do.
Squicky? What a wonderful word!
I must try to remember to use it sometime.
RR
“Squicky”? Well, that’s a little too close for comfort to “squicking” and we don’t wanna go there.
Well, it means that here, too. But since we call all of our sentence-ending dots “period,” chances are as an American you learned that definition of the word first. Not to imply that the Brits can’t handle homographs, but context clues pretty much eliminate the squickiness, fifth-graders excepted.
It means “no ifs, ands or buts”. Period.
So, it’d be really squicky if I said something like:
[british accent]
Ya see mate, the damn Yanks call a full stop a bloody period!!
[/british accent]
For the record, there’s a maxipad commercial that uses a slogan something like: The best protection. Period.
The commercial illustrates this with a little red dot flying around.
I had no idea what the feeling I got watching it was called. Now I know: squicky.
I use phonetic punctuation every once in a while, just to see if people are paying attention. Pt!