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People Are Confused About What ‘Biweekly’ Actually Means
People are unsure what ‘biweekly’ actually means.
There’s a range of discourse about what the real definition is.
People have turned to social media for help, with one user writing: “Anyone else have a problem with what biweekly means, or is it just me?”
Another says: “Don’t even get me started on biweekly.”
“This is why I’ve maintained ‘fortnightly’ in my vocab. At least I know what that means,” a third adds.
So it turns out that the definition of biweekly has two meanings.
Dictionary.com, Merriam-Webster, and the Cambridge Dictionary each have two different definitions for the adjective.
Not understanding what it means can be confusing, especially in the workplace. It is one of those words that changes the meaning depending on the context.
It is not just biweekly, which can be a confusing term, but also bimonthly and biannually. Does it mean twice a month or every two months? Is it biannual, twice a year, or once every two years?
Merriam-Webster editor, Peter Sokolowski, said: “This is absolutely a problem of English, just generally, we just don’t have a good tool for this.
“It is odd that bi, which means two and twice, then becomes confused with itself. It’s an unusual circumstance linguistically.”
Swokoloski also said that the terms biweekly, bimonthly, and biannually are commonly searched on the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
Garner’s Modern American Usage and The Associated Press Stylebook say that biweekly is every two weeks, and semiweekly is twice a week, which is a different definition from the dictionary.
The advice when using biweekly is that it is all about giving context.
Associate Professor with the NYU Department of Linguistics, Laurel MacKenzie, said: “Sometimes you really just have to paraphrase because it can be totally ambiguous without context.”
Many people use the word assuming that others know what they mean, hence why it can be a confusing term for people to get their heads around, so it is best to give the full context when using biweekly.
Users are debating on X (formerly known as Twitter), with one person saying: “It all depends on the context.”
“Biweekly is twice a week. Fortnightly is every two weeks,” another adds.
Somebody else weighs in: “Let’s just use fortnightly,” a user suggests.
Indiana University English professor, Michael Adams, says: “So if we’re looking for a solution to the problem, let’s bring fortnight and fortnightly back into use.
“And then we don’t have to worry about biweekly or bimonthly meaning two things, or about inserting semiweekly or semimonthly, which users clearly, from the historical record, do not prefer.”
Dictionary.com says that biweekly could mean both’ twice a week and once every two weeks
So biweekly can mean two things: occurring twice a week or occurring every two weeks.
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