Latest News

These were bi-weekly, with various possibilities of casual arrivals besides. They worked it all up from the boiler-plate war news in the Bi-weekly and Luke’s school geography. Robert J. Samuelson has written a bi-weekly column for Newsweek since 1984. For a person making $50,000, that cut meant an extra $1,000 in income, or about $40 for every bi-weekly paycheck.

1. For a person making $50,000, that cut meant an extra $1,000 in income, or about $40 for every bi-weekly paycheck.
2. Another synonym for biweekly is semiweekly, which means “twice a week.” The prefix semi- means half or partially.
3. If you have an annual salary of $1 million, your biweekly paycheck will be about $38,000.
4. We’ll dive deeper into the meaning of biweekly, why it sometimes confuses people, provide synonyms to avoid uncertainty, and discuss other time-related words that use the bi- prefix.
5. Although this is an acceptable synonym for biweekly, it’s not a common term for American English speakers.

So while most people use it to mean once every two weeks, both definitions are grammatically correct. It’s important to provide context as to which definition you’re https://accounting-services.net/ using when developing a meeting agenda or other documents for other people. But what about when you’re at the mercy of English as it’s wielded by others?

In other languages

They sound professional and are less likely to cause confusion. Technically, semiweekly is the term that you’re looking for. But if you’re trying to avoid ambiguity, then go with something like “twice a week” like Hugo suggested.

Nine Obscure Beer-Related Words

It is sometimes used for meetings held once every two years. There are three times as many Google hits for semi-annual as bi-annual, so that could indicate a lack of confidence in using bi-. Use fortnightly for “once every two weeks”, and twice a week for, well, “twice a week”. We can use fortnightly to indicate once every two weeks and help disambiguate that way.

Are there any other words we could use which could help, particularly words which mean “twice a week”? I’m looking particularly because some of my colleagues speak English only as a second language, and find fortnightly difficult to remember. Biweekly means twice a week or once every other week, though it’s more commonly used to refer to the latter. Hyphens are not used after the prefix bi- unless the root word starts with the letter I. The Essex Institute has its Field-meetings,its pleasant bi-weekly summer visits into the country, and is everywhere welcome.

When to Use Different Expressions for Biweekly

For, as anyone who pays attention to our work surely recognizes, we are at the mercy of the language. We diligently record the English lexicon in both its measured expansions and its wild proliferations, and any insistence by us that it favor the former over the latter is as whispers into a gale. Biweekly and bimonthly each have a pair of meanings that are unhelpfully at odds with one another.

If you’re chatting with friends or sending a casual email, “twice a week” or “every other week” would suffice. We have two words for events occurring in periods of years – biannual meaning twice a year, and biennial meaning once every two years. Another synonym for biweekly is semiweekly, which means “twice a week.” The prefix semi- means half or partially. For maximum clarity, writing “every 2 weeks” or “twice a week” is advisable (regardless of correctness or incorrectness of “biweekly” in either sense).

This connection may be general or specific, or the words may appear frequently together. Biweekly means both, but most American English speakers use it to refer to something occurring every other week or twice monthly. Biannual is more straightforward, as it’s only used to mean twice a year.

Popular in Grammar & Usage

Take a (break/brake) and (pore/pour) over this (cache/cachet/cash) of questions about commonly confused words. Not everything has to be a single word, so don’t be afraid to use more than one word when you want to use clear, understandable, unambiguous language. Add biweekly to one of your lists below, or create a new one.

Kids Definition

A biweekly meeting with your manager takes place once every two weeks unless otherwise specified. A semiweekly meeting, on the other hand, occurs twice a week. Biweekly is most commonly used to refer to the cadence of meetings or paychecks. In both cases, it’s commonly understood to mean twice monthly or once every other week, usually taking place on the same day of the week. British people use the word fortnight—which derives from the old English word for “fourteen nights”—to refer to events that occur once every two weeks.

If you’re keen on enhancing your vocabulary or understanding the nuances of language, there are several online platforms and resources available. Websites like Oxford Dictionaries or Merriam-Webster provide detailed explanations and usage examples for a wide range of words. For those looking to practice and improve their language skills, platforms like Duolingo offer interactive lessons in multiple languages.

Although this is an acceptable synonym for biweekly, it’s not a common term for American English speakers. We’ll dive deeper into the meaning of biweekly, why it sometimes confuses people, provide synonyms to avoid uncertainty, and discuss other time-related words that use the bi- prefix. In business meetings or official documents, “fortnightly” or “every other week” might be more appropriate.

I agree with those who suggested “fortnightly.” If someone feels that it’s antiquated or “odd,” that is their problem! Besides the ambiguity of the words “bi-weekly” or “bi-monthly,” I think that they are esthetically ugly and artificial words that detract from the English language. Try “twice weekly,” if “fortnightly” doesn’t biweekly synonym do it for you. While biweekly is one of the most commonly confused words with the bi- prefix, it’s not the only one. This means that paychecks will be issued once every two weeks, usually on the same day. There are 52 weeks in a calendar year, meaning that people paid on a biweekly basis receive 26 paychecks per year.