To avoid confusion, specify whether you mean twice a week or every two weeks. Both are correct, but “biweekly” (without a hyphen) is the more commonly used form in American English. No, biweekly writing conventions do not allow for a two-word form. The biweekly vs semiweekly difference remains an issue, as semiweekly always means twice per week, while biweekly can mean both twice per week and every two weeks. While fortnight and fortnightly were much more frequently used historically than biweekly, their usage began to peter out a little bit after the 1950s, Adams said.
Articles Related to bimonthly
- Most states have payday laws, which mandate how often employees should be paid.
- Biweekly pay means you pay your employees on a set day once every two weeks, resulting in 26 paychecks per year.
- Furthermore, in the above examples, biweekly is an adjective that describes a noun.
- If you use words like triweekly, you will just confuse everyone.
This happened because some writers believed the hyphen would make the meaning clearer. And though the ambiguous definition of biweekly has been confusing people for a long time, dictionaries haven’t decided to stick to just a single definition. “That’s the result of fortnight being an old English word so well established historically that people saw no reason to use biweekly to mean every two weeks,” Adams said. A dictionary search for biweekly likely won’t clear up confusion about how often a biweekly meeting is being held.
First, it can refer to events that happen every two weeks or fortnightly. In addition, it refers to things that happen twice per week. The different definitions have left people — even the ones working at dictionaries — scratching their heads for a long time. The team meets on a biweekly basis to discuss project updates. If billiards has the reputation of being a pastime for gamblers, hustlers and hangers-on, the female-centric biweekly pool tournament at 4100 Bar offers a friendly, supportive alternative.
Biweekly Examples
Some companies follow a biweekly schedule example where employees receive payments every 14 days. Others use it for biweekly meetings, which may take place twice per week. Because of this, people often compare biweekly vs semiweekly difference and biweekly vs fortnightly usage to determine the correct term. Bi- simply means “two fixed periods added together”; semi means “happening twice in a fixed period”.
Is there a compelling reason you cannot use “every four weeks”? The advantage of using the phrase is that there is less possibility of being misunderstood. The first meaning is to refer to something that happens twice per week. Aliza Chasan is a Digital Content Producer for “60 Minutes” and CBSNews.com. She has previously written for outlets including PIX11 News, The New York Daily News, Inside Edition and DNAinfo.
What is “once in 2 weeks” called?
However, the example for bi-weekly given (“This magazine is published bi-weekly, on the 1st and 15th of the month.”) is I think incorrect. Because weeks are of fixed length and months are not, bi-weekly (ie. every two week) publications can’t possibly fall on the 1st and 15th of every month. Because payday occurs once every two weeks, some months will have three paychecks. Biweekly can be helpful if most of your employees are hourly workers.
What are some common uses of the word biweekly?
I’m looking particularly because some of my colleagues speak English only as a second language, and find fortnightly difficult to remember. There’s also the (not so commonly used) prefix “sesqui”, from Latin, that implies “1 and half times”. Furthermore, in the above examples, biweekly is an adjective that describes a noun. It is called biweekly, meaning something that happens every two weeks. Biweekly means twice a week or once every other week, though it’s more commonly used to refer to the latter.
- There are 52 weeks in a calendar year, meaning that people paid on a biweekly basis receive 26 paychecks per year.
- Biweekly is the most common option for a business’s pay period in the U.S.
- “And then we don’t have to worry about biweekly or bimonthly meaning two things, or about inserting semiweekly or semimonthly which users clearly, from the historical record, do not prefer.”
Another synonym for biweekly is semiweekly, which means “twice a week.” The prefix semi- means half or partially. Hyphens are not used after the prefix bi- unless the root word starts with the letter I. Technically, semiweekly is the term that you’re looking for. But if you’re trying to avoid ambiguity, then go with something like “twice a week” like Hugo suggested.
The biweekly meaning in English refers to something happening every two weeks or twice per week. This dual meaning causes confusion in work schedules, salary payments, and newsletters. Biweekly vs Bi-weekly often create confusion because they look different but mean the same thing. Some people believe the hyphen changes the meaning, while others use both terms interchangeably. Understanding the correct usage of these words is important, especially in payroll, publishing, and scheduling.
More from Merriam-Webster on bimonthly
Payroll processing for biweekly hourly employees is straightforward; however, processing for semimonthly biweekly synonym hourly employees can get confusing. For biweekly hourly employees, simply pay the employee according to the number of hours he worked over the past two weeks. For semimonthly hourly employees, to avoid confusion, most employers give employees a payroll calendar, which shows when semimonthly time cards should be submitted for each pay period.
As the following examples show, the other words in the sentence indicate which of the two meanings biweekly has. For example, an employee making $40,000 annually will make $19.23 an hour under a bi-weekly payroll system (($40,000/26)/80) but only $18.73 per hour bi-monthly (($40,000/24)/89). I detect a fair bit of frustration in the posts being tossed about here and it certainly will not end with this thread. In payroll, biweekly typically means every two weeks, while in general use, it can also mean twice a week. No, biweekly meaning in English strictly refers to something occurring every two weeks ortwice a week.
Businesses often compare biweekly vs weekly paycheck options to determine the best payment schedule for employees. The company hosts biweekly meetings every Tuesday and Thursday to discuss project updates. The HR department clarifies, “does biweekly mean every other week? The company follows a biweekly work calendar, scheduling team meetings every other Monday. The term bi-weekly is simply a hyphenated version of biweekly.
Biweekly means both, but most American English speakers use it to refer to something occurring every other week or twice monthly. Biannual is more straightforward, as it’s only used to mean twice a year. In this case, the prefix bi- us is used to mean “occurring twice.” Use the word biennial to describe events occurring once every two years.