Biweekly, semiweekly: a diatribe on the nuances of the English language

[Shin]

<Shin|work> biweekly is a strange word
<Shin|work> the latin root "bi" means twice
<Shin|work> hence "twice weekly"
<Shin|work> but biweekly actually means once every 2 weeks
<Celtic> lol
<Shin|work> odd
<Shin|work> semiweekly is what they say we should use for "twice a week"
<Celtic> you must be bored dude
<Shin|work> -_-
<Shin|work> it's a genuine dilemma
<reki> bianually is a similar problem.
<Celtic> perhaps
<Shin|work> bicentennial
<reki> means once every 200 years
<Shin|work> yes
<Shin|work> what would bicycle mean in that context then? :/
<reki> on wheel per two cycles
<Shin|work> yes
<reki> *one
<Shin|work> two people on a unicycle then
<reki> lol
<Shin|work> they should just obliterate all occurences of this from the language :/
<reki> well why dont they just use two
<reki> like a twocycle
<reki> twosexual
<Shin|work> twonoculars
<Shin|work> that's awful
<reki> ha
<reki> it sounds like a breast reference
<Shin|work> we should ask the relic forums
<reki> ie. caw look at those two noculars
<punkone> hahaha

I present this to you, o Relic Forum members. Discuss.

[CelticDAB]

I knew i shoulda got in on that discussion :)

[Molle]

Shouldnt BI in this case the exchanged for "EVERY OTHER"..

Like.. every other week
Every other 100 years
Every other sex?

[Delphy]

I'd go with bi, becuase it's the root meaning, and in a lot of words it still means 2.

I guess it's all a question of context. :)

[Murph]

you guys pick the strangest things to discuss.

[Shin]

Odd.

If I go with the poll, it seems that a majority would like "biweekly" to mean "twice a week"

Do you all realize that this is flying in the face of the dictionary definition?

http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=bi-

{Latin bis, bi-, twice,, and bn, two by two; see dwo- in Indo-European Roots.}
Usage Note: Bimonthly and biweekly mean “once every two months” and “once every two weeks.” For “twice a month” and “twice a week,” the words semimonthly and semiweekly should be used. Since there is a great deal of confusion over the distinction, a writer is well advised to substitute expressions like every two months or twice a month where possible. However, each noun form has only one sense in the publishing world. Thus, a bimonthly is published every two months, and a biweekly every two weeks.

Do you feel the excitement brought about by rebelling against the establishment?

[El Russo]

no shin, the majority are cool.

[SquidDNA]

Semi actually means "half," so semiweekly occurs every half a week. Biweekly should mean to occur every two weeks.

[Dan Van Crone]

*Everybody* knows that the correct term for two weeks is a "fortnight". :p

[the_sidewinder]

everybody? i didn't know what the hell a frotnight was until i was 12,

[ohaunlaim]

I had always thought a fortnight was either: four nights, or something to do with the ancient night life in forts.

Isn't two weeks a 'baker's-dozen-night-plus-one'?

I choose the fourth option... What about dualweekly, dualcycle, dualnoculars, dualsexual, dualcentenial, dualyearly, etc.

Semi actually... er... squids already read my mind so I wont repeat myself.

[Shin]

Squid would be perfectly right if not for things such as this:

http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=biweekly

Main Entry: 1bi·week·ly
Pronunciation: (")bI-'wE-klE
Function: adjective
Date: 1832
1 : occurring twice a week
2 : occurring every two weeks : FORTNIGHTLY

Nice definition, no?

[TheGeneral]

Oh please. The day the English language makes sense is the day I inherit the throne of Japan. There are a lot more nuances than just that example, fellas.

For instance- data and media are both plural. I personally have never seen their singular forms used evar.

But it looks like the majority would like it to be "I pick the fourth option because I'm cool-weekly"...

TheGeneral

[Walker]

would you prefer newspeak? to erase all nuance, colloquialism and individuality from a language in favour of making it uniform.

language is a wonderful thing. it scales to fit. there are a thousand shades of every meaning. i like that, its a good thing.

btw, if i want to say something happens twice weekly, i say it happens twice weekly. theres no lack of logic there, or any scope for misunderstanding.

[TheGeneral]

The point of a language is to communicate ideas; any nuances or colloquialisms only hinder the goal. If there was a computer lanuage out there that had odd nuances going on, it would quickly loose followers.

English makes little sense, and I don't enjoy the amount of confusion it can cause.

TheGeneral

[SquidDNA]

As much as it pains me to say, Walker has something of a point. The subtleties of a language are its paints if its writers are artists.

However, I think this case just illustrates what utter fuckheads people can be when it comes to the proper use of a word. In my eyes, this ranks up with "orientate." I want to travel back in time to find the first person who decided that "orientate" was the verb form of "orientation" (which is really a derivative of the verb "orient") and then club them to death with their own humerus, to illustrate to all present that words should not be treated in such a manner.

[Starfisher]

Squid, go cut something. Quickly. Before you do someting rash, like going back in time and killing the guy who invented "orientate". Imagine a world without it! There would be crime everywhere, building collapsing, supermarkets looted! Nothing would resemble the utopian paradise we share today!

If it wasn't for the possibility of nonsense and vagueness in the english lanugage, we wouldn't have "D'oh!" or "Crap!" as exclamations. D'oh, is obviously a nonsense word. Crap is incredibly vague, refering to a wide range of things. Bodily Function. Excrement. Food. Embrace the ambiguity and dance!

Never, ever eat seven boxes of something that's main ingredient is sucrose. You get very hyper. I will not go into this further.

[Stoo]

Originally posted by TheGeneral

For instance- data and media are both plural. I personally have never seen their singular forms used evar.

TheGeneral [/B]

Datum and medium, aren't they? I've heard of people talking about "a particular datum" before... Doesn't media refer to the various mediums of entertainment (TV, radio, etc.)?

[Mnementh]

Humans make it a habit to be hypocritical, its what makes them human.

[TheGeneral]

Right-o, Stu. GJ with the smarts :p. Yes, the singulars are datum and medium, but I personally have never seen them used, although the medium one I guess does make a bit of sense.

As for the whole 'individuality' in language, why? There are dozens of other places- art, music, food, for a few examples- where a culture can show it's uniqueness. It's just stupid to put wierd, for lack of a literally advanced term at the moment, things in the basic verbal form or communication. It may be artistic, but it also makes things also uneedily confusing.

We are the Borg. Imerfection is not an option. :cylon:

TheGeneral

[AcolyteOfDeath]

Oldspeak (English) is doubleplusungood. I am a doubleplusgood duckspeaker of Newspeak. :D

I think that bi in reference to time should be replaced with "double". So twice a week would be doubleweekly, twice a month would be doublemonthly. Bi should be used in conjuction with nouns, like BI-plane and BI-cycle. Semi means half, but Semiweekly is too complex. It's much better to change it to halfweekly. Semiweekly = halfweekly, but halfweekly is easier to say. Semi should also be used with other things, but not with time.

[El Russo]

a nice plural... rhinoceroses ;)

[reki]

fish and fishes is a good one too. fishes is the plural of fish species, so you would use it as thus:

"what kinds of fishes were biting?"

and fish is the singular and plural of one particular fish species. you only ever hear ichtheolologists using it correctly, however.

[Trinity]

Originally posted by Stoo


Datum and medium, aren't they? I've heard of people talking about "a particular datum" before... Doesn't media refer to the various mediums of entertainment (TV, radio, etc.)?


"The media is the medium." <---- FAMOUS CANUCK

[CelticDAB]

I wish i was as smart as you guys:(

[Alliance]

i like the bi, simple, makes sence and has been used for hundreds of years, it would be a pain to change every book in the world....

i seem to conferstrait(? how to type ?) for a missing letter with another in the next word.

[El Russo]

but when "bi" was used as a prefix (in these hundreds of years) it's meant every two of the following word. for example, bi-annually is an event which occurs every two years (e.g: the athletics world championships). it has never meant twice a year.

surely twice-weekly suffices for twice a week and bi-weekly for once every two weeks. why complicate matters by trying to use the second for both?

[disco stu]

19/bi/fem

[molo]

i think tweekly would be a good substitute.

[mrmin123]

millenium should be renamed minlenium because u should all worship me

ps keep it 'bi' plz ;(

[Alliance]

erm, i dont think that one poll on the relic forums has that mucj influence... unless shin is actualy the guy who makes up all those really enoying words.