Is “fortnight” an outdated word?

Monday, June 4, 2018

I'm studying English vocabulary books, I find this word in each unit describing time words (days, weeks, months...).

There are 2 weeks in a fortnight.

Almost I haven't seen this word before in social websites, emails or movies. the only place I heard this word is in historical movies.

So, is it a outdated word or native speakers still use it?

Answer

"Fortnight" is very much alive and well in British English.

I believe that many Americans regard it as a word out of history.

I suspect (though I don't know for sure) that other English speakers areas (eg Australia, New Zealand, South Africa) still use it.

Update: on GloWbE (the corpus of Global Web-based English, these are the figures:

(The other 13 areas it distinguishes are all below 200, including South Africa and Canada).

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