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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It's because of British English, and the fact that American English seems to have dropped a word which is caused confusion.
Bi-weekly means two times a week.
Fortnightly means every 2 weeks. But American English seems to have lost the word fortnightly, so there is this ambiguity now.
thanks for the explanation, as an Australian reading this I had no idea what was going on cause bi-weekly means bi-weekly here and fortnight is every two weeks.
Til Americans don't have fortnights...
They don't have "scores" either at least anymore.
Don't they have scores when lots of people die? The news here only ever uses scores when it's referring to loss of life. like if a building collapsed. they'd say 'scores of people were killed today etc..'
"Scores" just means "a lot". Nobody here uses "score" (singular) to mean 20.
wtf does 20 have to do with anything?
That's how much a score is.
so?
So I was relying to a comment about scores. Do you not understand how conversation works?
not this one no
We do, we're typically familiar with the concept it's just not something we say. Kinda like how we know what autumn is but we just call it fall.
It's kinda weird but I'm sure you know the feeling with some words you know of but it's kinda weird for people to use in a sentence.
What's the adjective in American for "having to do with the season fall?"
Autumnal. It's not used much.
Even worse is bisexual not meaning "having sex twice". Ask me how I know...
How do you know?
Hey, long time. Do you want to have sex again? No, it's my girlfriend's turn now...
Fortnightly FTW. We can always (try to) re-educate the masses!