Bimonthly is a term that refers to two different meanings. One is “twice a month” and the other is “every two months”. This term may be used as an adjective or adverb but generally creates some confusion because of its dual meaning. A teacher for example may instruct his/her students to submit assignments on a bimonthly basis and some students may interpret it as every two months. Other students meanwhile may submit assignments twice a month. For people who want to use this particular term, it is always a good idea to emphasize its intended meaning. Instead of simply saying bimonthly, one may emphasize the submission of reports “twice a month” or “every two months”. To further emphasize on this sample instruction, it may also be best for the teacher to give out specific dates for the report submission in order to avoid confusion.

The term bimonthly may also be written as “bi-monthly”. The “bi” refers to “two” which translates to “twice monthly” or “2x in a given month”. People that work in publishing companies often use the term bi-monthly when referring to magazines and journals. A particular magazine may be released or made available to the public with a bi-monthly schedule. Most people would assume that a bimonthly magazine release refers to “every two months”. If the magazine has its first issue released in January for example, the expected next release will be in March. The next months for release will be in May, July, September, and finally November. If the publisher of the same magazine wants to be clear about the schedule of release, they may do so without using the bimonthly term but rather give out specific schedules or dates in order to avoid confusion among its readers. Some people may take the bimonthly schedule as every two weeks and so will expect new issues of the magazine in the same time frame.