Except that this isn’t at all a universal rule.
Q: When’s your birthday?
A: Next month.
Q: When are we discussing Johnson’s proposal?
A: At the next board meeting.
Q: When are you buying that new car?
A: Next Tuesday.
Only in the third situation would I consider the “next” to mean the Tuesday following the one immediately ahead.
and this is why context matters -
a) month is a long time - if it were tuesday, saying next tuesday is always the next one - therefore “next month” is always the immediate next month.
b) also clear in context - since you’re waiting for the ‘immediate’ next one.
c) to me is the oblique one - since presumably its not tuesday - “next” tuesday should mean the very next one, but depending on proximity to the immediate next one, may mean the one after.
Nope. As illustrated in my link to the IRS publication, twice a year is semiannual.
Meanwhile, google/dictionary says biannual can be used interchangeably, biennial means every two, and semiannual means twice in a single year.
Umm, yeah
12 months@30 days each=360 days
The 13th month is five days long. Squeeze two paychecks in those five days and it would make a dent in the American tradition of spending a months pay you don’t actually have on Christmas gifts.
The semi/bi weekly team meeting used to be a running job at my last job because know one know if it was twice a week or every other week.
Next used to be the superlative of “nigh”. (As in, “God is nigh”.) Near was the comparative. So
Nigh, near, next
were parallel to
Green, greener, greenest.
Nigh is now obsolete, and near has taken its place, and nearer invented to fill the missing slot.
So once upon a time, next Thursday would certainly have been the nearest Thursday (probably moving forward, since time is like that.)
But hey, we also have “nearest”, now.
So the meaning of “next” has drifted, and people often use it to mean not the nearest, but the one after that.
But not always. This is still a change in progress.
It doesn’t mean dating a female one week, and a male the next?
I’ve had this problem at work. Some people refuse to accept that it can be confusing. I just say, explicitly, “two times per week” or “every other week” or something like that.
Yes, obviously. The point I was making was that your ‘rules’ (this x, next x) don’t actually work as rules. Like just about everything else in English, there is no hard and fast rule for when “next” means the nearest one or the one after that.
I’ve been making breakfast sandwiches lately using English muffins. A package lasts seven days, so I biweekly.
well, more like guidelines really - I wasn’t trying to say “these are the rules”, but more so how I use and interpret the statements.
Twice a week.
Every other week.
Post #33. Great minds…(and also snarky ones).
“Next Tuesday” is the Tuesday of next week but is said only after the Tuesday of the week before. If you say it on a Sunday, you say “this Tuesday.” On Mondays, you say “tomorrow.”
Now you know.
Today is Wednesday, October 14. How do you refer to Tuesday, October 20?
But, do you Bayreuth?
If I had a meeting I would say…
I am meeting client on Tuesday.
Or
This coming Tuesday I am meeting client.
If meeting was on 27th. I would say
Next Tuesday I am meeting client.
‘Bi-weekly’ means to me…
It means I probably have to ask for clarification; “do you mean fortnightly, or twice-weekly?”