“I see someone every two days” [closed]

Question

"I see someone every day" - meaning you see someone every day. "I see someone every other day" - meaning you see someone one day, not the next, then the day after, but not the next and so on.

What is "I see someone every two days"?

I am sure it means you see someone, have a 2 day break, see them again, then have another 2 day break.

But then I thought, every two days could be one day in between, because every day has no days in between, and 2 comes after 1.

So: What is seeing someone every two days?

Answer 1

"Every two days" is the same as "every other day." If you wanted to describe a two-day break, it would be "every third day."

Answer 2

For practical purposes one can consider "every two days" and "every other day" to be nearly equivalent. But for illustration, consider a larger timespan- say, every week. Here, something done every week gets done one time for each 7-day period, but not necessarily on the same day of the week. It might usually be done on Fridays but due to some special consideration it could get done on Saturday and still be considered to be done every week. Whereas saying it's done every Friday suggests that it is not permissible to be done on Saturdays instead.

It is the same thing for every other day, where this really means on alternating days, while every two days means it must be done once for any given 2-day period but in some cases the two days could be consecutive.