biennial

1. 1.

   having a life cycle lasting two seasons

   “a biennial life cycle”

   “parsnips and carrots are biennial plants often grown as annuals”

   Synonymstwo-year

   Antonymsperennialannual

   botany

2. 2.

   occurring every second year

   “they met at biennial conventions”

   Synonymsbiyearly

   Similarperiodic

1. 1.

   (botany) a plant having a life cycle that normally takes two seasons from germination to death to complete; flowering biennials usually bloom and fruit in the second season

   Broaderplant

   botany

Other forms of biennial

plural

biennials·

Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.

Questions about biennial

What does biennial mean?

biennial means "having a life cycle lasting two seasons". That is the primary sense; the word has 3 in total, listed in full on this page.

How many syllables are in biennial?

biennial has 4 syllables: bi-en-ni-al. The stress falls on "en". In IPA it is /baɪˈɛniəl/.

What is another word for biennial?

Close synonyms include two-year, biyearly. Each sense on this page lists its own synonyms, because a word with several meanings rarely has one substitute that works for all of them.

What is the opposite of biennial?

The recorded antonyms are perennial, annual.

Is biennial a common word?

biennial is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.

What rhymes with biennial?

2 words rhyme with biennial. Rhymes are matched on the phonemes from the last stressed vowel onward, which is the definition a reader has in their head.