Why does bi-weekly mean "every two weeks?" This has always bothered me because intuitively it should mean "twice a week."
Why does bi-weekly mean "every two weeks?" This has always bothered me because intuitively it should mean "twice a week."
Similar case in point: "bimonthly" means "twice a month." That makes sense.
But the definition for "bi-weekly" does not make sense.
What do you think?
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I prefer to use "semiweekly" for twice in a week, and so on for other periods.
Use it in a sentence:
I used to get hard every day, but now I'm lucky to get a semiweekly
Please start a word of the day series
they used to eat semolina but now they eat semiweekly
Lmao I'd interpret that as every two weeks. Semi meaning "almost", so "semiweekly" would mean almost weekly, hence, every two weeks. I guess you could think "almost" the other way but I feel like semi is usually used in a way that is "quite but not as good", twice a week would be more than once a week so I semi would have to be every two weeks in my mind.
Semi just means half. Semifinals, semester, semi-truck, etc.
Right, so half the frequency, meaning every two weeks, yes?
Semi means half. Period.
Yes, so the frequency being weekly: Half that frequency is every two weeks.
We meet once a month (monthly)
We meet once a week (weekly)
We meet once a semiweek (semiweekly)
We meet once a day (daily)See the pattern here? Half the interval, not half the frequency. I hope you were just being cheeky.
I'm not being cheeky. That's how I perceive the thing, but I'm not a native English speaker and french has a way to distinguish between both cases without using semi(which is confusing too imo). Bimensuel => 2 times a month Bimestriel => every two months
Yes. But really no.
I agree. If someone told me they wanted to do something semi weekly I'd assume they meant about once every week or even maybe less.
i'd interpret that as half-way to weekly, or once every two weeks