Biweekly and bimonthly can mean the same thing as a result of the prefix bi-, which here can mean “going down every two” or “going down twice in.” Therefore, biweekly is also “twice in per week” or “every varied week.” Bimonthly can moreover mean “every varied week” if or no longer it is twice in a month, or it is a long way going to mean “every varied month.”
Stare up the adjective biweekly in this dictionary and that chances are you’ll eye it defined as “going down every two weeks” AND as “going down twice per week.” Similarly, the adjective bimonthly is defined as “going down every two months” AND as “going down twice a month.”
For this, we’re sorry. Nonetheless we do no longer mean “sorry” within the sense that we feel penitence; we’re no longer in label. We mean “sorry” within the sense that we feel a roughly sorrow indignant by conditions previous our lend a hand an eye on or energy to repair.
Omit it, Jake. It be English.
For, as someone who will eavesdrop on our work absolutely recognizes, we’re on 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 vulnerable over the latter is as whispers actual into a gale. Biweekly and bimonthly every enjoy a pair of meanings that are unhelpfully at odds with one yet one more. Those meanings exist, and we is never any longer going to ignore them.
The enviornment lies within the prefix bi-: it capacity (amongst varied issues) both “coming or going down every two,” AND “coming or going down two cases.” This too is a prolonged-established indisputable truth that we is never any longer going to ignore. English is generally simply obstreperous.
Nonetheless intractable the English language might even simply at cases be, it is a long way going to also be precious to undergo in mind appropriate the a quantity of conditions through which the language is never any longer ambiguous, through which its choices consist of phrases that test with particular gradations or fine distinctions.
One such case, form of, is incredibly corresponding to the conditions at hand: the language affords us biannual for “twice a year” and biennial for “every two years.” Here is precious and sublime, but, alas, moreover ceaselessly botched, with biannual so ceaselessly mature to mean “every two years” that we’ve needed to enter that meaning in our dictionaries. Nonetheless here yet one more resolution is out there: skip biannual altogether and exercise in its set the popular semiannual.
Ah, semi-! Fair as a semicircle cuts a circle in half, so too does the prefix semi- semantically decrease what it is a long way affixed to in half: semiweekly capacity unambiguously two cases per week; semimonthly capacity two cases per month; semiannual capacity two cases per year. It be an comely option, and one that many writers appear to embody; we most in most cases eye bimonthly and biweekly reserved for their “every two” meanings.
One other resolution is to lend a hand away from the bi- compounds altogether and come appropriate out with it: “twice per week,” “every varied month.”
As writer or speaker, chances are you’ll perhaps presumably acquire to lend a hand away from ambiguity by the usage of a semi- compound whenever you happen to mean “two cases per,” or by the usage of a phrase in set of a single note. Undoubtedly, so fraught is this territory that you’d attain effectively to ensure that your context explains appropriate what you mean whenever you happen to exercise any of these bi- compounds: “Employees are paid bimonthly, on the principle and third Fridays of the month.”
Nonetheless what about whenever you happen to’re on the mercy of English as or no longer it is wielded by others? Successfully, whenever you happen to might even very effectively be a reader or listener, we’re anxious top-of-the-line chances are you’ll perhaps presumably attain is to manner biweekly and bimonthly with a limited bit of side-recognize—and per chance the roughly sorrow indignant by conditions previous your lend a hand an eye on or energy to repair.
