Confused about whether biweekly means “twice a week” or “twice a month”? Martha rants about why the using the words “biweekly” and “bimonthly” at all is a bad idea, period. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Banish “Biweekly””
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, my name is Nancy.
Hiya, Nancy.
Hello, Nancy. Where are you calling from?
San Diego.
How are things in San Diego? Oh, wait, I know that.
Well, how are you, Nancy?
What’s on your mind today, Nancy?
Well, I’m good, but I have a question about a word.
All right.
I work in a situation where I authorize treatment for people, and we had a question come up of what does biweekly mean? Does it mean twice a week or every other week?
Oh.
Well, that would be really important in your line of work, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Makes a difference between eight times a month versus twice a month.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So did you guys come to any conclusions?
Well, we looked it up on the Internet, and we found both descriptions of the word. I did find that semi is what they said would be twice weekly. So semi-weekly as opposed to bi-weekly. But I’ve seen the definition both ways, where bi-weekly could be twice a week or twice a month.
Yeah.
But semi-weekly is open to misinterpretation as well, isn’t it?
Do you think?
Probably.
How so?
Well, because it doesn’t clearly say twice a week. Semi-weekly could be three times a week.
What, you’d sort of go to treatment?
Right.
Well, semi-weekly means not weekly, so something less than weekly, which could be twice a week or three times a week or even four times a week.
Yeah.
Nancy, I think you have demonstrated by calling exactly the reasoning behind what I’m going to say, which is that I’m not one for banning words and I’m all about free speech and all that, but the words bi-weekly and bi-monthly need to be banned. They need to be taken out to the trash and burned. We need to just remove them from the language because they’re not useful. The only place where those two words are fixed in meaning is in the publishing world. You know, if you get a bi-monthly magazine at home, that means you get it once every two months. And a bi-weekly magazine is one that you get every two weeks. But other than that, Nancy, I say just, you know, put them in one of those hazardous materials things and get rid of them. Because they are just useless.
I would agree.
You’re going to have to pretty much stick to twice a week and twice a month. What’s the best alternative to mean every two weeks, every other week?
How about every two weeks?
Every two weeks or every other week.
Yeah, or twice a month. These are words that are just especially in your field, Nancy, but I think just in general. Otherwise, you’re going to miss your biweekly meeting because you don’t know when to go.
Right.
Exactly.
It’s very frustrating.
It would be easier if people would just say what they mean.
Right on.
Well, you don’t have any argument here.
Okay.
All right, Nancy, thanks for your call.
Thank you.
Thanks, Nancy.
All right.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Get it?
Bye?
Oh.
All right.
Har-har.
Har-har.
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