Used instead of 'yearly' as this might be taken to imply the period"January 1st" to"December 31st". However the language used in contracts is only vaguely related to everyday English. This usage probably comes about because of some obscure case history in contract law.
From WordWeb: Annual: Occurring or payable every year What is the corresponding single word for occurring every two year, three year, four year etc.
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If not, use a. For the word 'year' to be preceded by 'an' it must sound like it's beginning with a vowel. The reason why it is a tad tricky is because of the difference in the way people pronounce it. Some people pronounce the word 'year' as 'ear' with 'y' silent, thereby wanting 'an' to precede and feeling discomfort with 'a'. e.g.
From the Oxford Corpus of English:. PER ANNUM. For 30 years, it had gone remorselessly ahead, at about 80% per annum.
While either of the adverbs semiannually (“In a semiannual manner, twice yearly”) or biannually (“Twice per year”) might serve, you could also consider twice-yearly and half-yearly, which fairly transparently mean twice a year and every six months, respectively.
Late Latin annuālis, equivalent to Latin annu(us) yearly (derivative of annus circuit of the sun, year) + -ālis -al1; replacing Middle. Thereby, annual or annually despite being synonymous with yearly is considered to be more formal. For example: Company X has just published its annual report. It is very unlikely tho come across a yearly report.
Just being positioned between"Quarterly" and"Yearly" should mitigate the ambiguity. So either one would be understood. (It won't stop some from making a mental note that it might be the wrong word, but they will still know your intent.) I would go with semiannually, myself.
The difference between annual and yearly is that one comes from Latin and the other comes from Germanic. Monthly is also Germanic, but the Latin word for monthly is mensual (source also of menstrual), and that's just not a common word in English, so there's no reason to use it except to show off one's vocabulary. –
Yearly (like leisurely; hourly) has a dual existence, of course, as an adverb and an adjective: He visits the doctor yearly. / He makes yearly visits to the doctor . It would seem to make sense that the compound five-yearly would also, but He visits the doctor five-yearly sounds distinctly off. coleopterist and Lynn explain the three different usages (five yearly...; five-yearly...; five-year ...