biennial
adjective
What do bimonthly and biweekly mean?: Usage Guide
Many people are puzzled about bimonthly and biweekly, which are often ambiguous because they are formed from two different senses of bi-: "occurring every two" and "occurring two times." This ambiguity has been in existence for nearly a century and a half and cannot be eliminated by the dictionary. The chief difficulty is that many users of these words assume that others know exactly what they mean, and they do not bother to make their context clear. So if you need bimonthly or biweekly, you should leave some clues in your context to the sense of bi- you mean. And if you need the meaning "twice a," you can substitute semi- for bi-. Biannual and biennial are usually differentiated.
Did you know?
Biennial conventions, celebrations, competitions, and sports events come every two years. Biennials are plants that live two years, bearing flowers and fruit only in the second year. (Carrots and sugar beets are two examples; since we're only interested in their roots, we don't wait another year to see their flower and fruit.) In contrast, semiannual means "twice a year". But no one can agree whether biweekly means "twice a week" or "every two weeks", and whether bimonthly means "twice a month" or "every two months". Maybe we should stop using both of them until we can decide.
Examples of biennial in a Sentence
Jason Farago, New York Times, 3 Nov. 2023
The rotavirus also used to follow a biennial pattern where cases would peak every other year, typically on even number years like 2024.
—Adrianna Rodriguez, USA TODAY, 18 Mar. 2024
The Bank of England tested the insurance and banking industries together in 2021 as part of the climate biennial exploratory scenario test to flush out contradicting assumptions about who will have to absorb ever increasing financial losses from natural catastrophes.
—Nina Seega, Forbes, 1 Mar. 2024
The biennial event featured 13 days of competition with nearly 10,000 athletes competing in 19 sports.
—Miami Herald, 30 Jan. 2024
Nearby, a sculpture by the MacArthur fellow Carolyn Lazard, of Philadelphia, in their second biennial appearance, consists of actual mirrors: a small maze of chrome medicine cabinets standing on the floor.
—Martha Schwendener, New York Times, 13 Mar. 2024
On that issue, the WTO decided to extend the pause until their next biennial meeting.
—Jon Gambrell, Quartz, 2 Mar. 2024
The flying display — a highlight of the biennial air show — saw Singapore’s air force perform an aerial display with a F-15SG fighter jet and an AH-64D Apache helicopter.
—Zen Soo, Fortune Asia, 20 Feb. 2024
The 34th edition of the biennial tournament was supposed to be played in June and July last year but was postponed to avoid Ivory Coast’s tropical rainy season.
—Ciarán Fahey, USA TODAY, 8 Jan. 2024
These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'biennial.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
Word History
1562, in the meaning defined at sense 1
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Cite this Entry
“Biennial.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/biennial. Accessed 19 Apr. 2024.
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Kids Definition
biennial
adjective
More from Merriam-Webster on biennial
Nglish: Translation of biennial for Spanish Speakers
Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about biennial
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