It’s funny that there are two unambiguous alternatives to bimonthly, but they both mean 2x/month: fortnightly and semimonthly.
Both German and Dutch distinguish their equivalent words with clear prefixes meaning half- and two-. The English word was unclear after 1066 since the French word bimensuel would have been used by the new bosses. And that means 2x/month. English used bimensual for a while before developing a new, worse word with the Latin origin bi- and the Germanic origin -monthly. And it seems to have been ambiguous from the start. So this has probably been messed up for almost 1050 years.
Maybe we should resurrect the Old English prefix twi- to make a new(old) 1x/2months word twimonthly or more intuitively, twomonthly that we can use in opposition with halfmonthly.
It’s funny that there are two unambiguous alternatives to bimonthly, but they both mean 2x/month: fortnightly and semimonthly.
Both German and Dutch distinguish their equivalent words with clear prefixes meaning half- and two-. The English word was unclear after 1066 since the French word bimensuel would have been used by the new bosses. And that means 2x/month. English used bimensual for a while before developing a new, worse word with the Latin origin bi- and the Germanic origin -monthly. And it seems to have been ambiguous from the start. So this has probably been messed up for almost 1050 years.
Maybe we should resurrect the Old English prefix twi- to make a new(old) 1x/2months word twimonthly or more intuitively, twomonthly that we can use in opposition with halfmonthly.