No Stupid Questions

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Why does bi-weekly mean "every two weeks?" This has always bothered me because intuitively it should mean "twice a week." (lemmy.world)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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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[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Canadian here, with 50 years in the workforce. I've never once been paid semi-weekly or bimonthly. Here, biweekly is every two weeks semi-monthly is every half month. Obviously, that latter is often spoken of as twice a month, which just adds to the confusion between "bi" and "semi".

The reality is that these words, like most words (at least in English), mean whatever the speaker wants them to mean and consensus can be hard to reach.

I give you the phrase "table the discussion". Sometimes it means to formally bring something up for discussion. Other times it means setting the discussion aside for future consideration.

Or, my favourite from my childhood, "fat chance" which means that something is even less likely than if it had a slim chance. Granted, that might be more in the line of idiomatic slang, but it stands as part of at least the era's Canadian English that did have broad consensus and still does, I think.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

On the last part: sometimes words drift to be widely accepted as an exact opposite of the original meaning. I think that happens because they were never popular enough for people to remember what they really meant or because too many people used them incorrectly.

An example you gave "fat chances" feels like it was originally sarcastic but then stuck, "quite a bit" feels the same way although I don't know for sure.

And then apparently there are also contronyms that has exact opposite meaning, so yeah some things just require more explanation 😅