English

Etymology

sesqui- +‎ annual

Adjective

sesquiannual (not comparable)

  1. Occurring once every one and a half years (i.e. once every 18 months).
    • 1979, R. E. Meyer, Sesquiannual Report – April 1977-September 1978, Fossil Energy Division/DOE (DOE/W-7405-eng–26-1; cited in Surface Phenomena in Enhanced Oil Recovery (2013, →ISBN, page 718)
    • 1990, Sesquiannual Meeting of the American Society for Rickettsiology and Rickettsial Diseases; 8 (the society holds meetings roughly every 1.5 years, e.g. September 1989, May 1991, and September 1992)
    • 2012, Information Retrieval Technology: 8th Asia Information Retrieval Societies Conference, edited by Yuexian Hou, Jian-Yun Nie, Le Sun, Bo Wang, and Peng Zhang, →ISBN, page 29:
      NTCIR (NII Testbeds and Community for Information access Research) is a sesquiannual series of international evaluation workshops hosted by National Institute of Informatics (NII).
      [The 12th NTCIR conference was held 7-10 June 2016 and covered the period January 2015 - June 2016; the 11th conference was held one and a half years earlier 9-12 December 2014 and covered the period September 2013 - December 2014.]

Usage notes

Conventionally, X-annual terms (like biannual) mean "X number of times a year" and so this term would be expected to mean "one and a half times a year, i.e. once every 8 months"; however, that sense is not attested; in use, this term is treated as a synonym of sesquiennial (once every one and a half years).

Related terms