Alumnus, Alumna and Alumni

Nowadays my wife June is busy with her MGS (Methodist Girls School) Alumni. Alumni are the former students or graduates of a school, college or university. Hence MGS Alumni comprise of the former students of that school.

It is quite interesting to note that where before, alumnus (singular) and alumni (plural) referred to male graduates of academic institutions, alumni has now evolved to mean former men and women graduates of coeducational institutions. Most dictionaries define alumnus as a male graduate or former student. A new term alumna has now been coined to refer specifically to a female graduate or former student of the school, college or university (alumnae plural). Hence David is an alumnus of UNSW and Sarah an alumna of UTS.

Usage has changed over the years, and the words now also refer to former employees of organisations, and former inmates of prisons. It is quite interesting to note that many terms are now being rephrased into sex-neutral language, for example stewardesses are called Flight Attendants, Freshman to First Year Student, and Coed to the gender-free Student. Graduate is preferred in a non-sexist world. (Dictionary Of Confusing Words by William C Paxson, Penguin Books USA Inc., 1990).

Biannual, Biennial, Bimonthly and Biweekly

I used to get a bit confused when the words biannual and biennial were mentioned. Biannual means twice a year and bienniel means every two years. Thus we go back to our home town biannually, for Chinese New Year and for Christmas. We take a vacation abroad biennially, that is once every two years.

Biennial can also mean lasting for two years. Thus a bienniel plant is a flowering plant that takes two years to complete its lifecycle. It bears leaves, stems and roots in the first year, and then flowers, produces fruits and seeds and dies in the second year.

Now there are confusion where bimonthly (or bi-monthly) is concerned. Bimonthly means occurring every two months, but is often taken to mean twice a month! A similar error is encountered with biweekly (or bi-weekly). I guess to be clear, we should say "twice a month" or "every two months".