• idunnololz@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    biweekly, bimonthly, etc.

    Wtf does it mean? Twice a week? Every two weeks? Who knows. What’s the point of this word when it’s so ambiguous.

    • Hugin@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      Twice a time period. Semi for every two time periods. So every two weeks is semiweekely. However it gets misused so often you almost always have to check making it almost useless.

      Similar to failsafe vs redundant.

      • bluejuh@lemmy.world
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        5 hours ago

        Frustratingly enough, it’s the other way around. Biweekly is every two weeks, semi weekly is two times a week.

        I remember it like this:

        • bicycles are two circles, biweekly is two weeks
        • semicircles are half a circle, semiweekly is half a week

        But yes, people use the words interchangeably so often that it’s faster just to avoid the problem altogether and just say “every two weeks”.

    • rmuk@feddit.uk
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      1 day ago

      In the UK we have the word “fortnight” for two weeks, which helps. I also found out very recently that “biannual” mean twice a year and “biennial” means every other year so, yeah, fuck knows.