Biannual

//bʌɪˈanjuːəl// adj, noun

adj, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Something occurring twice each year.

    "It was a biannual from April 1970 to October 1977 and has been a quarterly since fall 1978."

Adjective
  1. 1
    Occurring twice a year; semiannual. not-comparable

    "The annual values were disaggregated into biannual values. Then the biannual values were disaggregated into quarterly values. Finally the quarterly values were disaggregated into the desired monthly values."

  2. 2
    Occurring once every two years; biennial. not-comparable, proscribed

    "The relative share of agriculture in GDP of the West Bank (calculated on the basis of fixed 1986 prices, and as a two-year average to deal with the major biannual fluctuations in olive production) declined[…]."

Adjective
  1. 1
    occurring or payable twice each year wordnet

Example

More examples

"The annual values were disaggregated into biannual values. Then the biannual values were disaggregated into quarterly values. Finally the quarterly values were disaggregated into the desired monthly values."

Etymology

From bi- + annual.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.