Musings by Mo-T

By: Mo-Theresa
Weekend Retreat Coordinator

Today seems to be the first real Autumn day here at camp. Some might even call it a blustery day. Feel free to count me among the “some”. It’s a touch chilly, and very windy. Leaves are blowing, layers are being worn, and hot chocolate is being warmed. Mmmm…Soon we will have fires going in the fireplace, I will be skiing everywhere…and oh, sorry, I think I got lost in a daydream.

Being the weekend retreat coordinator this year, I have a bit of spare time during the week. (But only a bit – it takes a lot of work to plan those retreats, and help out all over camp!) I use this time to cause mischief, daydream (as you just witnessed) and… and… well I’ve got nothing. That’s why I decided I would write on the blog every other week.

This led me to trying to figure out exactly what kind of poster (as in a person who posts on the blog, not hangs on the wall) I would be: would it be biweekly, bimonthly, semiweekly, or semimonthly? After a raging debate in the office, I turned to the more reliable source of http://www.dictionary.com/ for some help.

Here are the definitions I found:

Bi weekly-Occurring every two weeks,
Occurring twice a week; semiweekly
Bimonthly- Occurring every two months,
Occurring twice a month, semimonthly
Semi weekly –Occurring, done, appearing or published twice a week
Semimonthly - Made, occurring, done, or published twice a month

Okay, so let’s talk this out. It could be biweekly, because it occurs every two weeks. It seems as though it could also be bimonthly, occurring twice a month. This however says it is the same as semimonthly. This makes sense, according to the definition of semimonthly, but begs the question, “How can bimonthly and semimonthly mean the same thing?”
So I decided to look up semi – nothing. Only one thing left to do, look up the prefix “bi”. This is what I found:

All words except biennial referring to periods of time and prefixed by bi- 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).

So there you have it, bi can mean either, but semi only has one meaning. Still, the debate continues. Is this a biweekly/bimonthly post? Is it a semimonthly post? Or, should it be a biweekly/semimonthly/semiweekly post? I guess I have 2 weeks to figure it out…