Quarterly means happening once every three months. Quarterly results, a quarterly meeting, paid quarterly.
It is the rhythm of company reporting, and the criticism of it is real: managing to the quarterly figure encourages decisions that look good for three months and bad for ten years. A quarterly is also a magazine published four times a year. Note that a quarter here is a quarter of the year.
1adjectivequarterlyHappening once every three months.
“We pay the electricity bill quarterly, so it comes in March, June, September and December.”
quarterly is a frequency.
Middle English
quarter
English
quarter
English, today
quarterly
From quarter + -ly. quarter comes from Middle English quarter. From Middle English quarter, from Anglo-Norman quarter, from Latin quartarius, from quartus. Compare Spanish cuarto (“room, quarters; quarter”). a doublet of quartier.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA