Bi-weekly?!?

[AubreyFairweather]

Hello,

I'm new here and I am a self-confessed pedant. On Tuesday 13th March I was aghast when I was completing the 'Quick' crossword from The Guardian and noted that 12 across's answer was 'biweekly' when in fact it should have been 'fortnightly' (see clue). AIBU in wanting to draft a sternly worded letter of complaint? What is this teaching the impressionable, malleable minds of children and simpletons alike?

www.guardian.co.uk/crosswords/quick/13055

In the meantime, I shall search for a life.

Welcome to MN Aubrey

YABU, you should be doing the cryptic.

I emailed the Guardian recently because for a few days they moved the cryptic crossword up the page so the grid sat on the fold and it was driving me bonkers. I didn't even get a reply but they did move it back to the bottom half of the page so maybe my sternly worded email did the trick. Who knows?!

I quite enjoy berating companies when they do things that displease me. I have had three conversations with top managers at the company that made my car, it's quite easy to find out their email addresses (thank you google).

Oh, and I remember the 'biweekly' answer. It puzzled me too.

But 'bi weekly' can mean either twice a week or every 2 weeks because bi can mean either twice or two so either twice weekly or two weekly.

bi-
1  
a combining form meaning ?twice,? ?two,? used in the formation of compound words: bifacial; bifarious.

Origin:
< Latin, combining form of bis; see twice

Usage note
All words except biennial referring to periods of time and prefixed by bi- 1 are potentially ambiguous. Since bi- can be taken to mean either ?twice each? or ?every two,? a word like biweekly can be understood as ?twice each week? or ?every two weeks.? To avoid confusion, it is better to use the prefix semi- to mean ?twice each? ( semiannual; semimonthly; semiweekly ) or the phrase twice a or twice each ( twice a month; twice a week; twice each year ), and for the other sense to use the phrase every two ( every two months; every two weeks; every two years ).

Thank you all for your replies (except Moist, obvs. )

Dammit, it would appear that either usage is perfectly acceptable then although Wiktionary (okay, hardly arbiters of grammatical usage...) does state:

"Usage notes: Like bimonthly and biennially, but unlike biannually, in the adjective and adverb senses, the prefix bi- applies to the week rather than to the events that occur, therefore giving the sense of ?every two weeks?. Since the term is also used in the UK to mean ?twice a week?, it is ambiguous there. In British English, for the sake of clarity, it is advisable to use one of the synonyms instead."

Oh well