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The word for "biweekly" you are looking for is "semi-weekly".
If someone told me a thing happened semi-weekly, I would interpret that as almost-but-not-quite weekly, as in, most weeks this thing occurs- but not every week.
If someone asked you to draw a semicircle, would you draw almost a circle but not quite a whole circle? Or, would you draw half of a circle because semi means half?
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As a non-native English speaker, this is what I thought when I was first introduced to this word. I was even fighting it when I was told it meant "every two weeks". Then I caved and went with the flow. You are the first person to ever agree with me. I'm not crazy. Thank you.
You might already know but English has the word 'fortnight', which also means every two weeks. In the UK, I've never heard 'biweekly', so you might find 'fortnight' easier to use.
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Because "weekly" is kind of a fraction (1/week), and 2/week and 1/(2week) are very different, but both can be pronounced very similarly. Read kind of like (2-week)ly and 2-(weekly). Which is why both meanings are used, so you need to use context to disambiguate, or just guess if context isn't available.
This is also the reason why in this thread people say "semiweekly" is the other option, but they don't all use the same other option. You have the same, but inverse problem there.
Think of biweekly and biweekly as homonyms, they can mean either and you figure out the meaning through context.
Very few things happen twice a week, biweekly usually means every second week, but it's never used because fortnightly is preferred.
Others here are saying bimonthly means twice a month but I've never heard it used that way. Again, very few things happen twice a month, it's always fortnightly which is not the same. Lots of things happen every second month, "the board meets bimonthly", that means 6 times a year.
Biannual always means twice a year because what things do you do every second year?
In all cases you can use the alternative meaning like "I visit my cousin biannually" and it's not incorrect but of course "I visit my cousin every second year" avoids confusion.
The word for an occurrence of every two years or for a duration of two years is biennial. Plenty of events are biennial, such as festivals, exhibitions and conferences. The Olympics and Football World Cup are quadrennial.
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Just to note, while fortnightly is used frequently in many countries, it is almost never used in the US, which I think is what contributes to the posters confusion (assuming they are from the US) .
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we have bi like in binary(yes, no/ one week yes other no) and bi in like bisexual(atraction to 2 genders/ twice a week) i think the problem is more deep than the week
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this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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