Talk:fortnight

Tea room discussion

Note: the below discussion was moved from the Wiktionary:Tea room.

Fortnight has a number of slightly inaccurate translations. For now I've contented myself with pointing out that the Catalan and Portuguese quinzena; the French quinzaine, the Italian quindicina, the Spanish quincena, and the Greek δεκαπενθήμερο are all actually 15 days long, not fourteen. Should these close but no cylinder of rolled tobacco leaves entries be kept? In the case of the five Romantic entries, there likely should be a good entry to link them together at given their common origin, but I'm thinking that halfmonth would likely do the job as well. Carolina wren 03:43, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

• It's not as simple as observing that the root of the word is the number 15 rather than the number 14. Current usage, of which examples abound, is that these, however inaccurate they may be from a strict non-idiomatic point of view, are the translations that are actually in use in the world at large. One could generate a list of examples as long as one's arm, but I'll start with just one: The Quinzaine des réalisateurs at the Cannes Film Festival is, in English, the "Directors' Fortnight". And that translation has been around for 40 years, now.

  Note, by the way, that there's no inherent logical disagreement between a period of 14 nights and one of 15 days — the other "but these aren't the same thing!" argument that is often proposed.

  Also note that the translation for week into Welsh is wythnos, which is eight (wyth#Welsh) night(s) (nos#Welsh). One can cry that the numbers are inconsistent until one is blue in the face. That doesn't change the fact that these are the translations that the world uses. Uncle G 01:54, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

  • It all makes perfect sense if one thinks that the first and last nights are not complete - i.e. only 'half nights' - and the whole period is bounded from midnight to midnight. Pingku 16:57, 12 March 2009 (UTC)

I'll throw in another way to look at it: 15 days have 14 nights between them... --BigBadBen 22:04, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Another example of the same thing is that in German you can say heute in acht Tagen ("today in eight days") synonymously with heute in einer Woche ("today in a week"). There's nothing "inaccurate" about such expressions. It's just whether you count the current day among the days, or whether you start with tomorrow.

RE: "Should these close but no cylinder of rolled tobacco leaves entries be kept?"

I suppose you mean "Should these close-but-no-Cigar entries be kept?" ?

121.127.214.165 20:58, 4 March 2016 (UTC)

is it really synonym to half-month

According to other sources, a fortnight is 14 * 24h, and a half-month is a bit more, half of 30-31 days.

Indeed, the wikipedia says they are not synonyms; I've corrected the wiktionary accordingly. 187.73.213.2 19:40, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

fortnightly vs semimonthly

In North America it is far more common to use the term biweekly. Neither of these terms should be confused with semimonthly, which divides a year into exactly 24 periods (12 months × 2), instead of the 26 (≈52 weeks ÷ 2) of fortnightly/biweekly. --Backinstadiums (talk) 21:23, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

RFD discussion: September 2018–March 2020

The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process (permalink).

It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.

---

fortnight

I think "fortnight" in "Wednesday fortnight" is either a noun or an adjective, but not an adverb. If it is an adverb, that PoS should be added to "week" Helenpaws (talk) 13:35, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

If evening isn’t an adverb this is neither. It is to be understood as an accusativus mensurae, adverbial accusative Indo-European languages use often for time and space. Sometimes one creates these for Arabic but I tend to do not because it is regular use and not lexical, no kind of conversion has taken place usually. Remove because of the analogy. We could add adverb senses to night etc. else. Also remove in the other day, Friday, Tuesday and everywhere else where it can be spotted. I have been surprised to find that it is found as an adverb sense in Tuesday. Now I find mid-March … oh no. Nobody ascribes adverb quality to März despite German uses the month names without “in” (not “in March 2018” but “März 2018”; and we can also say “den März 2018” though this is usually too much to be said; but point is these all aren’t adverbs lexically). Fay Freak (talk) 21:04, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

If you're making an analogy between "Wednesday fortnight" and "Wednesday night/evening", I see these as rather different. The latter is a night/evening, while the former is not a fortnight. This makes the classification as a noun more straightforward in the latter, in my opinion. Mihia (talk) 18:08, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

• Not an adverb nor an adjective, delete. I moved the quote. DonnanZ (talk) 23:22, 12 September 2018 (UTC)

I can see why these may appear to be adverbs. "I'll see you Wednesday fortnight" is elliptical for "I'll see you on Wednesday in a fortnight", where "on Wednesday" and "in a fortnight" are prep phrases that modify the verb "see", making them adverbial. I am leaning towards keep, since there seems to be a contained set of such words, i.e. this pattern doesn't work for all nouns (you can say "I'll see you on my birthday" but not *"I'll see you (my) birthday", and I don't think you can say "I'll see you June" or "I'll see you September" - they kinda sounds weird to me). Certainly, I wouldn't want to delete the other day meaning "recently". - Sonofcawdrey (talk) 12:54, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Deleted. bd2412 T 20:27, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

I contest this deletion. The above discussion appears inconclusive. At minimum, if the adv. sense is deleted then the "Wednesday fortnight" sense needs to be explained under another PoS, which presently it is not. Mihia (talk) 23:59, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't know why I didn't think to look at this originally, but at week this is listed under the "Noun" heading as follows:

Seven days after (sometimes before) a specified date.

I'll see you Thursday week.

IMO the PoS of "week" in this case, as "fortnight", is highly debatable. Can "seven days after" be the definition of a noun? At minimum, perhaps we can for now copy the "week" format, in the absence of any further input. Mihia (talk) 00:26, 11 March 2020 (UTC)