Fortnight
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The word derives from the Old English feorwertyne niht, meaning "fourteen nights".[1]
The word is common in the British-Irish Isles and many Commonwealth countries such as Australia where many wages, salaries and most social security benefits are paid on a fortnightly basis.[2] Fortnight is rarely used in United States of America, but is used regionally in Canada.
In many languages, there is no single word for a two-week period and the equivalents of "two weeks" or "fourteen days" have to be used. Payroll systems may use the term "bi-weekly" to refer to pay periods every 2 weeks (26 per year). In Spanish, Italian, French and in Portuguese, there are the terms quincena, quindici giorni, quinzaine and quinzena, all meaning "fifteen days", Similarly in Greek the term dekapenthimero meanning "fifteen days" is also used, same goes for the Arabs who use the term "خمسة عشر يوماً". All are used for a two-week time span.
[edit] Unusual usages
- The fortnight is the base unit of time in the FFF (Furlong/Firkin/Fortnight) System of units.
- It can sometimes be used to describe a unit of time equal to five months in some Dickensian literature.[citation needed]
- In the VMS operating system, some configuration parameters are specified in microfortnights (one millionth of a fortnight, or 1.2096 seconds).
- Millifortnights (about 20 minutes) and nanofortnights (1.2096 milliseconds) have also been used occasionally in computer science, usually in an attempt to be deliberately over-complex and obscure. The aim is generally to slow users down, allowing them to set parameters only after some thought.
- One attoparsec per microfortnight is approximately 1.00432766 inches per second.
- The speed unit of one furlong per fortnight is a barely noticeable 0.166 millimetres per second, or roughly 1 centimetre per minute.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ The Concise Oxford Dictionary, 5th Edition, 1964, p. 480
- ^ Australian Government - How much Disability Support Pension do I get?. Retrieved on 2007-08-03.
