Apr 12, 2011 · "He checked in ever so often." In the second example, the speaker subtly indicates his/her slight irritation or delight in the fact that "he" visited/called/stopped by to see the speaker so frequently. every so often. This phrase means occasionally. It can be easily substituted with from time to time, sometimes or every now and then. Examples ...

Deecemobile's suggestion that the every so is not needed "Often a woman is known to propose marriage to a man" is not warranted, because the sentence needs the every so, especially if it draws attention to a rare phenomenon. I have a feeling that a proposal by a woman is rarer than a proposal by a man. Every so often communicates this. In other ...

It is similar to saying "every odd week" or "every even week", only it doesn't matter what number week it is, it only matters that it's every second one. Saying "every week" and saying "every other week" are not equivalent; it has nothing to do with rules of grammar, only with the fact that it's every second week.

The "while" here indicates a period of time and "once in a while" implies something that happens infrequently during said period.

Jul 6, 2011 · "Every other time" in the sentence you provided is being used figuratively to mean "almost constantly" or "nearly every time." The literal meaning of "every other time" is every 2nd time period in a series (or alternating occurrences). I will explain by example. If you exercise "every other day," then you exercise Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and ...

Feb 13, 2016 · That is the literal meaning, of course, but it misses the point of the usage. "Once in a while" is an evasion. It is a way of deliberately not answering the question "how often"? How often do you bet on the game? Once in a while. This usage does not deny that the person bets, but give no information about the frequency with which they do so.

Jul 31, 2014 · On the other hand, I am sure a lot of people use the expression figuratively as a longer, more impressive alternative to often, meaning a somewhat higher probability than often. I won't try to interpret this, but in the Google corpus, much more often than not - which I think most people will understand literally - accounts for (not much) less ...

May 31, 2016 · Every chooses all items from a set. Consider everywhere vs anywhere, the set is places (from the 'where'). Everywhere means all places in the set. For example "I dropped the brush in the paint bucket and the paint got everywhere" means that the paint is now in all the places or in every place or everywhere. Whereas anywhere means just one place ...

When you are talking about the annual bake sale, you mean every upcoming bake sale. Each year, we raise funds by having bake sales. We have bake sales every year. If you think about how each year and every year affect the sentences, you will see how the sentences have different meaning. I would trust the Longman dictionary on this.

Yes, the prefix means two, so bimonthly can mean twice a month or every second month. Always use context, look at the sentence or the surrounding paragraph. That should help you figure out which meaning is being used.