weekly
Word family
Synonym discussion
Sense: adjective/1
All five words are adjectives describing how often something occurs, but they differ in their time intervals. Weekly means 'happening once every seven days' — common in routine contexts like meetings, payments, or classes. Daily refers to something happening every day, making it the most frequent of the group (e.g. a daily newspaper vs a weekly magazine). Monthly means once every four weeks or once a calendar month, such as a rent payment or a subscription. Annual specifies once a year and is usually reserved for events like company reviews, festivals, or subscriptions. Biweekly is trickier: it can mean either 'twice a week' or 'once every two weeks,' so learners should check context carefully. In practice: 'I attend a weekly staff meeting on Mondays' (every 7 days), 'I buy a daily train ticket' (every day), 'I pay monthly rent on the first' (every ~30 days), and 'We have an annual holiday party in December' (once a year).
Common collocations
Phrases
- on a weekly basis
- once a week
- per week
- week in, week out
Etymology
Weekly is formed from the noun week plus the suffix -ly, which turns a time noun into an adjective or adverb meaning 'every [noun]' (compare daily, monthly, yearly, hourly). The word week itself comes from Old English wice or wicu, meaning 'a cycle of seven days,' of Germanic origin. Related forms appear in Old Saxon wika, Old High German wehha, and Old Norse vika. The seven-day cycle was adopted into Germanic culture through early Christian influence from the Latin septimana (seven-night period). Weekly entered English use as both an adjective and adverb by the 15th century, and the noun sense referring to a weekly publication developed by the early 18th century as periodical publishing expanded.