Can something be both "annual" and "all year?"

December 16, 2003 2:40 PM

Can something be both "annual" and "all year?" Say, hypothetically, an on-line film festival that runs all year but is refreshed with new films annually?
posted by djacobs to writing & language (10 answers total)

Yes I think so. If something's content is refreshed every year, then it is "annual", and if the content is available all the time during that year, its occurance is "all year."
posted by girlhacker at 2:50 PM on December 16, 2003

I don't think so... an "annual" event, like a film festival, occurs once a year. An event running all year long is "yearly," i think, or a non-event.
posted by amberglow at 3:07 PM on December 16, 2003

Seems like it would be different for an online event. More like the online thing would be "annually updated", though the content would remain.
posted by Kafkaesque at 3:13 PM on December 16, 2003

Yeah, sounds like you're saying two different things. I hear "the third annual foo" and I immediately think of a discrete event that probably lasts a whole hell of a lot of a year.

Updated annually == updated yearly, IMHO. I think the last sentence of your post hits the nail on the head.
posted by cortex at 3:22 PM on December 16, 2003

amberglow, don't the Oscar's technically run all year? I mean the presentation is one night but movies are considered from the entire year.
posted by substrate at 3:33 PM on December 16, 2003

The Oscars are awarded at an annual event and nominations are announced at another annual event (one time each year each), but the movies eligble can come out at any time during the year. There is a yearly Oscar race, but the Oscars don't happen all year, I don't think. I think a festival (or any event) has to have a start and stop date and not be ongoing or perpetual, or else what makes it an event? It's kinda like why say the "5th Annual Animation Festival" or something like that if it's been happening throughout every single day of those 5 years.
posted by amberglow at 3:51 PM on December 16, 2003

Spike & Mike's Festival of Animation [year] is a collection of films that travels around. You could say it has a start and end date in each location, but really, its start and end is however long they decide to tour it around . I would call that an annual festival that goes on all-year as it tours. (although I'm not sure that specific example is actually done annually)
posted by girlhacker at 3:59 PM on December 16, 2003

Years are annual and run all year.
posted by jfuller at 4:31 PM on December 16, 2003

If something is both annual and all-year, I'd call it continuous.
posted by bonehead at 4:45 PM on December 16, 2003

Imagine a guy who makes an annual pilgrimage to Poughkeepsie, and it takes him 365 days to get there, and an hour to get back home. (Suppose he walks there and flies back, or something.) So each year he starts over the day he finishes; it's an annual thing, and it lasts all year.

Works for me.
posted by mattpfeff at 9:35 PM on December 16, 2003