174
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
174 points (92.6% liked)
No Stupid Questions
2174 readers
2 users here now
There is no such thing as a Stupid Question!
Don't be embarrassed of your curiosity; everyone has questions that they may feel uncomfortable asking certain people, so this place gives you a nice area not to be judged about asking it. Everyone here is willing to help.
- ex. How do I change oil
- ex. How to tie shoes
- ex. Can you cry underwater?
Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca still apply!
Thanks for reading all of this, even if you didn't read all of this, and your eye started somewhere else, have a watermelon slice 🍉.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I never heard that semi meant 1/2. I've always thought of semi as rather vague tbh. Meaning that there is no set amount of time between things.
bi- means two, as in bicycle: two wheels (circles)
semi- means half, as in semicircle: half of a circle
The problem is that the prefixes can be parsed as affecting either duration/interval as in (bi-week)ly, every two weeks, or frequency as in bi-(weekly), two times weekly. The same applies to semi-.
Personally I find the frequency interpretation a bit of a stretch—"two" is not the same as "two times" or "twice"—so I would tend to read e.g. bimonthly as every two months rather than twice each month.
You can bisect a circle to make two semicircles!
But if it's semicircular...
bi-sect: cut into two parts; from Latin "bi-", two, and "secare", to cut.
The "sect" part is critical. "bi-" on its own doesn't imply division.
Heh, yeah, I'm just messing with people here 😆
(This language confusion is mildly amusing, in the apparent inherent ambiguity we've created)