The only context I’ve ever heard fortnight is Wimbledon, and the Gettysburg Address the most common use of score.
It’s just interspersed throughout society. As **Cazzle **noted:
I’ve been in the workforce almost 30 years. I’ve only ever experienced fortnighly pays. As a result, a lot of automatic deductions are fortnightly too.
Ditto for rent (when I’ve had to pay it).
Government allowances are paid fortnightly. Even simple things like the local council garden waste collection is fortnightly.
How often would it be used? All the time.
As mentioned by Cunctator, our bins are collected weekly but they alternate, with recycling collected one week and green waste the next. We’d say they were picked up fortnightly.
I’ve been having fortnightly check-ups through the third trimester of my pregnancy. As of last Tuesday my baby was due in a fortnight. My partner will probably take a fortnight off when it arrives.
My Dad’s woodworking club meets on the second and fourth Saturday of the month. If you just missed this weekend’s meeting, the next one is in about a fortnight.
Easter is just over a fortnight away.
If you don’t feel like using the word is contrived or unusual then using the word to describe any situation involving roughly two weeks is natural. I’d say hardly a fortnight goes by that I don’t use the word fortnight.
I think fortnightly pay is the norm in Oz? But I don’t think it’s very common in the UK now: white-collar workers get paid by the month, and everyone else either monthly or weekly. (I will now be followed by a long series of posters telling me I’m wrong!)
However, most (?) state benefits here are generally paid fortnightly, although they’re calculated on a weekly basis.
When I was younger I scored fortnightly.
In common use in Singapore as well. I suspect this might be a British colony thing.
As for “score,” I still encounter it in certain contexts. I doubt anyone would order a score of something, but I do see references to “scores were killed” and such.
It’s used so often in the UK that I’m honestly a little disconcerted to find out it isn’t used at all, and even found to be obscure or archaic, in the US.
I find fortnightly to be a more accurate way to say once in two weeks rather than use bi-monthly or bi-weekly.
According to the dictionary - they both can mean once in 2 weeks!
There aren’t always an even number of weeks in a month, so I’d use “semi-monthly” more often than fortnightly. It frustrates me to no end that people have supplanted “semi-” incorrectly with “bi-” to the point that it’s not even incorrect anymore! Now I always have to ask for clarification, which defeats the purpose of having a word!
I’m in the US (California), and am paid fortnightly. While not universal, it’s not uncommon, either.
However, in my experience it’s very rare to hear it described using that term. When I describe my pay schedule, I say “every two weeks,” or something similar. There’s nothing invalid about the term fortnight - it’s just rather obscure here.
About a year ago we switched from semi-monthly to, er, fortnightly paychecks at my workplace. Under the old scheme we were paid on the 10th and 26th of each month*. Now we’re paid every alternate Friday*; two months each year, the days line up so that we’re paid three times during a calendar month.
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- Or the last workday before if the scheduled date is a holiday or (under the semi-monthly scheme) a weekend.
On this issue I as a Brit would like to contribute that people in N.E. England don’t actually speak English.
These people are known as Geordies if they’r from Newcastle, but their neighbours are just as unintelligible.
Can you elaborate? What do they speak? Is it just highly accented English, or are you saying they speak some form of Scots or some Celtic language?
Indeed - this is one of the things (other than my inability to do an American accent) that would trip me up if I ever tried to pass for a US citizen. I know about faucets and elevators and sidewalks, but it was only a couple of months ago I found out that fortnight isn’t often used in US English.
I was speaking to a Geordie the other week who’d spent a long time in the South of England. He said when he first came down that he literally could not buy a pint in a pub because he could not make himself understood. He said he eventually learnt that he could make himself understood by slowing down what he said.
I’ve got some good friends from England, (although they consider me a good mate) and when the husband and I just knew each other professionally, I didn’t notice that much difference between his English and mine.
After I became friends with his wife and especially after they had a baby there were many words which I was suddenly learning for a first time. Nappies, prom, etc. They used fortnight at least every two weeks.
(Yes, and it’s hard to not subconsciously mimic them.)
Typo or summat for “pram”…?
I’ve been working with a bunch of folks from the UK and Ireland on an integration project for a company my employer acquired, and I hear the term “fortnight” at least twice a month. Or once a fortnight if you wish.
Pram, of course.