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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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[-] AnonStoleMyPants@sopuli.xyz 6 points 11 months ago

Lmao I'd interpret that as every two weeks. Semi meaning "almost", so "semiweekly" would mean almost weekly, hence, every two weeks. I guess you could think "almost" the other way but I feel like semi is usually used in a way that is "quite but not as good", twice a week would be more than once a week so I semi would have to be every two weeks in my mind.

[-] meant2live218@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago

Semi just means half. Semifinals, semester, semi-truck, etc.

[-] AnonStoleMyPants@sopuli.xyz 1 points 11 months ago

Right, so half the frequency, meaning every two weeks, yes?

[-] CrayonRosary@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago
[-] Orygin@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Yes, so the frequency being weekly: Half that frequency is every two weeks.

[-] CrayonRosary@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

We meet once a month (monthly)
We meet once a week (weekly)
We meet once a semiweek (semiweekly)
We meet once a day (daily)

See the pattern here? Half the interval, not half the frequency. I hope you were just being cheeky.

[-] Orygin@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago

I'm not being cheeky. That's how I perceive the thing, but I'm not a native English speaker and french has a way to distinguish between both cases without using semi(which is confusing too imo). Bimensuel => 2 times a month Bimestriel => every two months

[-] pythonoob@programming.dev -2 points 11 months ago

Yes. But really no.

[-] pythonoob@programming.dev 2 points 11 months ago

I agree. If someone told me they wanted to do something semi weekly I'd assume they meant about once every week or even maybe less.

this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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