Never thought about this before, but now you mention it, it really could mean either I have always read it as once every two weeks, but not so sure now.
War, pestilence, plague.
Inhumanity, suffering and nihilism.
This thread isn't about any of those.
No.
This is about an extremely important subject - ambiguity.
Let's start with biweekly.
I was just on a conference call and five people spent a good ten minutes bickering about whether it meant twice a week or every two weeks.
I thought it meant the former but I'm willing to acquiesce to the majority view here.
Never thought about this before, but now you mention it, it really could mean either I have always read it as once every two weeks, but not so sure now.
Used to work in publishing, I take it to mean every 2 weeks.
According to Oxford Dictionary:
Every two weeks or twice a week.
HTH
Every 2 weeks for me
Twice a week would be semiweekly wouldn't it?
I assume it is every two weeks, so make a point of using twice-weekly/fortnightly
bi-weekly is every 2 weeks
semi-monthly is twice per calander month
so one would be 24 times a year and the other 26 times a year
as for important issues, you would have a hard time to find someone who doesnt have rediculous views these days they picked up on the internet
Bi-weekly at work is universally used for a meeting every 2 weeks. Big global company too.
Twice-weekly seems nice and clear for a meeting twice in the same week. It also sounds like too many meetings.
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Agree it's ambiguous and best to use 'fortnightly' for every 2 weeks.
Two weeks
Excellent first choice AO
Interestingly (or not, YMMV) the problem is the same in French, with a nuance.
The Littré (a rather old fashioned dictionary) defines it as fortnightly, even indicating that twice weekly is an error and should be semi-weekly (semi-hebdomadaire)
The Larousse (most used when it only existed on paper) defines it as twice a week.
The Dictionary of the Académie Française also says it is twice a week.
My conclusion is that the meaning shifted over time, and nowadays the common acceptation is twice a week.
Of course, this is opening a can of worms, because by extension bimonthly should be twice a month; and how would you call a meeting that you hold every 2 months?
'Against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain' - Schiller.
When is next Sunday? 13 or 20 June? What if I ask the same question on Friday?
Don't just do something, sit there. - TNH
I heard a similar discussion on 5 live a few weeks ago, the interviewee said, if you had a meeting booked for Wednesday and were then told it was moved forward by two days, would the meeting be on the Monday or Friday?
It could be either and the way you decide is how you perceive yourself moving in time, some people ( subconsciously Im sure ) think that they are static and time moves towards them, some people think they are moving forward to the next day etc.
So the static people would think its on Monday and the moving people think its on Friday.
Something like that anyway.
Cheers..
Jase
So next Sunday is the Sunday after next.
Don't just do something, sit there. - TNH
Yes, albeit I find more helpful to say this instead of next (the Sunday after this).
Semi-related, twice-nightly is obviously twice a night, but I would use "every other night" not bi-nightly for every 2nd night. [A common link between these two obviously being Richard Whiteley.]
Good one, M - the next Sunday and this Sunday mix up is a regular pain. We need a new word...
To close the other ambiguity, it sounds like most of you think biweekly means every two weeks.
SJ makes a good point about consistency though...
Love the magazine idea Gyp, and the Richard Whitely reference juke.
Note - I've just edited this post as I was confusing myself...
Last edited by AlphaOmega; 8th June 2021 at 17:18.
Surely you have some context?
Bi-weekly on a Friday or Bi-weekly on Mondays and Wednesdays would make it clear.
For me, it means once every two weeks.
M
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Breitling Cosmonaute 809 - What's not to like?
I'd think that one would have been straight forward. To move something on by one day I'd assume the following day was meant. 'I had to move Wednesday's meeting on one day'= Thursday. To move it on two days would suggest Friday, and can't see how anyone would arrive at Monday.
This.
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Something I think about bi-annually...
On the changed meeting, I take it as bringing forward (earlier) or pushing back (later)
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For me.
Biweekly means twice a week.
Fortnightly means every two weeks.
Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Wait until you have English as your 2nd language… the confusion my Mrs has with this weekend/next weekend, amongst other things, is endless.
We discuss it perhaps bi-monthly
And trying to explain that “- pick you up” - always means “I will arrive in a vehicle”,
and never “means - walk to the end of the street and meet me”.
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Last edited by notenoughwrists; 8th June 2021 at 18:58.
For what it's worth, in the U.S. bi-weekly means every two weeks, and semi-weekly means twice a week.
So does Bisexual mean you get lucky twice a week or every other?
M
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Breitling Cosmonaute 809 - What's not to like?
And that's before you get on to what time is the bi-weekly meeting.
The meeting is at 7...what 7 in the morning or 7 in the evening.
I am glad my company moved on to the 24 hour clock many many moons ago.
Ah, but should 0 be at 12 O'clock or 6 O'clock?
Years (decades) ago, I worked for a computer company who, confusingly, named all their meeting rooms after office locations.
It took me a couple of days to work out that when someone (in Basingstoke) said "I've a meeting in Geneva at 2", that they weren't planning to fly anywhere!
It took me a lot longer, though, to work out where each room was in relation to each other, there was no geographic or alphabetic relationship!
M
Breitling Cosmonaute 809 - What's not to like?
If that is the case, how will they know if the cord has been pulled?
Bi - weekly to me means twice a week
Thank goodness i am retired:
I FEEL LIKE I'M DIAGONALLY PARKED IN A PARALLEL UNIVERSE
had a heated debate about this at work, for me its twice a week for sure.
Bi-weekly is once every two weeks
It is used because fortnightly seems to be a distinct UK practice and term.
Here endth the debate!
Good stuff.
Could we go with bilunarly as a proxy for once every two months?
If we can agree on this, I'll let the OED know.
I worked for a large company that named its (London) HQ's meeting rooms after tube stations - so on my first day, when someone said we have a meeting at St James Park - I was ready to go out the door.
They did have a decent naming system though and meeting rooms on the same floor floors would be stations all on the same "line" and in that order. So easy to orientate yourself once you knew the system.
The London offices of a certain French financial institution named its meeting rooms Rouen, Agincourt, Limoges, Poitiers, Caen and so on, until rumbled.