In response to my plea for clarification re: the true meaning of bimonthly, RMW, my extremely smart writer friend has this to say:
”Oh yes, I so have an opinion. Without “cheating” and going into my ref books, I think the bi- in bimonthly and biweekly originally meant every other month, every other week. (Semiweekly would mean twice per week.) After long misuse, it became acceptable to use biweekly, etc., to mean twice per week. :-) As a medical editor, you get this beat into you by senior editors your first year or two when you write about dosages…”

Semiweekly does make more sense as even I know that semi means half. Thank you dear friend. I knew you would have the answer!

This issue brings me to other words that seem to be used incorrectly on a regular basis, and I think it’s because they don’t sound like what they mean.

Example: enervate- when I first saw this word, I thought ooh wow, I’m going to get energized if something enervates me. NO. Enervate means to sap all your energy.

Example 2: penultimate- this does not mean even better than ultimate; it means second to last.
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I’m going to tell you that Yotam Ottolenghi has it going on with vegetables. That dinner was delicious. As an aside, fresh cucumbers are the bomb- they don’t taste anything like the ones from the market. Off to continue my in-hysterics reading of Bossypants.