With the help of an English tutor, you can enrich your everyday vocabulary and excel academically. Whether you’re setting up a meeting schedule, planning out study sessions, or booking biannual vs semiannual events, knowing the difference between “biannual,” “semiannual,” and “biennial” can be invaluable. Semiannual means occurring twice a year, the adverb form is semiannually.

Memorize the Meanings

At the end of the day, biannual and semiannual can be used interchangeably. However, remembering that biannual technically means “twice a year” and semiannual means “every half year” is a small but pivotal detail when you are deciding which word to use. To this end, best practice is to write around the confusion introduced by these terms. Since biannual and biennial are the real problem, writer Bryan Garner (2016) recommends that you avoid them entirely, and use every other year instead.

Wordplay

• Mark sets up an organizational meeting semi-annually to discuss the loan with other stakeholders.
• All such information is provided solely for convenience purposes only and all users thereof should be guided accordingly.
• Although you can often use either semi-annual or bi-annual, a good trick for remembering their differences is to look at the meanings of each prefix.

Fortunately, English also provides us with biennial, a word that specifically refers to something that occurs every two years or that lasts or continues for two years. The main difference between something that happens biannually vs. semiannually is the time between the events during the year. The terms biannual and semiannual are often used interchangeably, but they have distinct meanings.

When to Use Biannual vs. Semiannual vs. Biennial

I’m not sure what word came first, semiannual or biannual, but, in the modern day, most people use semiannual to avoid any confusion that arises from biannual vs. biennial. For instance, some plants are biennial, which means they complete their life cycle in two years. It’s crucial to distinguish between “biennial” and “biannual” because mixing them up can lead to a two-year gap instead of a six-month one! This understanding can be a game-changer in planning long-term goals or events. Shifting gears, let’s talk about “biennial.” While “biannual” and “semiannual” both refer to events that happen twice a year, “biennial” is different.

Final Advice on ‘Semiannual’ vs ‘Biannual’

Also, a biennial plant is one that takes two years to grow from its planting to its death. Biennial comes from the Latin biennium, which means a two year period. Since semi- means half or part, it will be easy to remember that you only need to wait part of a year before something semiannual happens again.

Semiannual and Biannual are interchangeable, their definitions are the same. The school district will also publish a semiannual report on its finances, once in February and once in November. The word biennial is usually used to mean “occurring every two years,” but its similarity to biannual makes a misunderstanding possible.

In this section, we will clarify these definitions to help you understand their differences better. While the debate may continue, you are now equipped to join the winning side in any situation. Words with overlapping meanings can be confusing, especially when pronunciations get thrown into the mix, but if you take special care to notice prefixes, you’ll do just fine. Knowing when to use the words is only half the battle; we want you to be able to say them properly too.

We believe that sustainable investing is not just an important climate solution, but a smart way to invest. Carbon Collective partners with financial and climate experts to ensure the accuracy of our content. Mark’s company often purchases large amounts of inventory to fill construction demands. Mark currently does not have the money to pay for the needed materials to meet his requests. Mark decides to take out a loan to cover the capital that he needs to fulfil the orders.