If you’d care to observe it in the wild - here are some examples:
Another way to put the question is why we in America have so little use for the term. As we’ve seen from the thread, the British, the French and the Australians – among many others, I’m sure – find it useful to have a ready term for half a month’s worth of time. Why don’t we?
FWIW, cognate to “quinzaine” is the Spanish “quincena”:
In Guatemala, Mexico and Panama, [“quincena”] is used to refer to the paying of half of the monthly salary received by a worker…
It should be noted that is is called “quincena” even when this payment isn’t made strictly every 15 days…
Excerpted from: Quincena - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre, (translated by me).
It’s interesting that you can see a use for a word that means exactly 7 days, but not one that means exactly 14.
Especially since, as I understand it (and as noted by others in the thread), a lot of US workers are paid fortnightly.
…really not that odd. There are seven days and then a reset.
Hmm. Payday. 14 days elapse. Payday. 14 days elapse..etc
It just seems odd that someone would live in a society where some things happen every 14 days and find it surprising that there exists a word for “14 days”, and ask why such a word is useful.
What he said.
I get paid fortnightly. So I do my grocery shopping fortnightly. I run a roleplaying game once a fortnight on the Friday. The game is this Friday, so the next session after that will be in a fortnight’s time. I also play in another game once a fortnight on the Saturday. The last session of that was the Saturday just gone, so the next one is a fortnight from Saturday. When the game finished and everyone was leaving we said “See you in a fortnight”
Because I get paid fortnightly I also buy my bus tickets on a fortnightly basis. I put money towards my mortgage once a fortnight. I see my family on average about once a fortnight. My mum’s got a fortnight’s leave over Christmas but between public holidays, mandatory shutdown and weekends, she only needs to take two days actual paid leave.
It was mentioned in another thread, possibly the pay one, about frequent confusion between Americans about what someone means when they talk about something happening “Bi-weekly” - is it two times a week or once every two weeks? Well, fortnight removes that ambiguity.
We do. Both “biweekly” and “bimonthly” are used to refer to something that happens every two weeks/twice a month, like how often I get paid or how often we have staff meetings at my job. “Fortnightly” has an advantage over these in that it’s more precise; “biweekly” can also be used to mean “twice a week” and “bimonthly” to mean “every two months”.
“Bi-weekly” is one of those words you use at your own peril. Ask a hundred people what it means, and half will say twice a week, and the other half twice a month.
–Why thank you leahcim. I’ve asked at least a dozen French about that over the years and all I ever got for a response was one of those quizical “you anglophones always ask the stupidest questions” looks that they’re so good at when they could have just as easily given me the reasonable explanation that you just have. (I take it your not French then?)
Why don’t you play every week?
Agree. Ditto bi-monthly. Drives me crazy. As close to a useless noun as possible, where you have to ask (“inflammable” is often cited as a bipolar word, but that doesn’t come up so often).
:dubious: … Because we don’t. The schedule works out best for the players involved to play fortnightly. There are different players involved, so the weeks involved are different.
So Sierra Indigo’s group should play every week because you don’t like the fact that they play fortnightly? Edit: And the reason you don’t like the fact that they play fortnightly is that you don’t like the word “fortnight”?
To clarify:
There are five people involved with each game, but the layout is different.
The game I run is fortnightly on Friday evenings. I am the GM. Brad, Luke, Kayleigh and Alex are the players.
The other game, run on alternate weeks is on Saturday afternoons. Brad is the GM. Luke, Stewart, John and I are the players.
Although there are three core players involved, there are four players who only play one of the two games that are running. Two of those players are only available on Friday evenings, so that’s when my game runs. The other two players are only available between lunchtime and about 6pm, and because I work full time the only days that I’m available in those hours are Weekends, so the other game runs on the Saturday. Because there are two different games and two different groups, running both games weekly would eat up between 10-12 hours of weekend time between Friday night and Saturday afternoon. So in the interest of not overloading anyone and burning players or GMs out, we play each game once a fortnight on alternating weeks.
I think part of the thing the OP is getting at, as someone else said, was the use of fortnight to mean more than one.
You can say we get paid every two weeks or every three weeks, or we go on holiday every month or every two months.
But you (usually) don’t hear we get paid, every two fornights. You’d say, once a month. You’d not say, we get paid every half fornight. You’d say once a week.
And so on
Good point. And yes - fortnight is seldom used as a unit.
ETA: I have seem it used that way, for example, if a holiday camp is organising a series of two- week events, they might describe them as fortnights, and you might book to attend fortnight 3.
I get paid fortnightly, that is every two weeks or 26 times a year. If I got paid bi-monthly, I’d get paid twice a month or 24 times a year. You gonna cover the missing pay? Well are ya, punk?
I used to pay an account monthly, but the gradually shifting pay-in date vs pay-out date meant I had to change payments to an alternate fortnightly date.
My bank even had an on-line option for that because it does make an appreciable difference for regular payments.
eta: That second glass of wine may have been a mistake.
Sennight was once a common alternative for* week*. OED has cites up to the late 19th century.