this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2023
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No Stupid Questions

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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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[โ€“] ook_the_librarian@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Agree. This example is just bi- meaning two. I get why the word "flammable" was created because "inflammable" confused people to a dangerous degree. But this not getting the difference between semiweekly and biweekly and therefore, let's everyone be right is not the answer.

[โ€“] sukhmel@programming.dev 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Unfortunately it is an answer, so maybe we're better off not using confusing words that mean both at the same time and using "twice a week" or "every other week" ยฏ\_(ใƒ„)_/ยฏ

Using those words in banking and even assigning definitive meaning to them looks legalese to me, like when you're using terminology not to be precise but to be harder to understand by laymen

[โ€“] ook_the_librarian@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Absolutely. I know I'm tilting at windmills. I'm being idealist, not prescriptive. But at least in legalese, if one were to write "hencefore 'semiweekly' shall mean 'at a frequency of every 14 days'", I would think, "well they're wrong, but at least it's not confusing".

For background, I'm a mathematician. I'm used to laying out definitions.

[โ€“] sukhmel@programming.dev 1 points 11 months ago

Also am a mathematician although not work as one, I'm not used to always providing the definitions first but it could've made so many things better