Monthly means happening once every month or relating to a single month. A monthly magazine arrives twelve times a year, once each month. If you get a monthly allowance, you receive it on the same day every month, perhaps the first or the fifteenth.

Many regular expenses follow a monthly pattern: rent, phone bills, and subscriptions all come due once a month. Your family might have a monthly grocery budget, limiting how much you spend on food each month. Schools often send home monthly newsletters to keep parents informed.

The word can describe both how often something happens (a monthly meeting) and how much time it covers (a monthly total rainfall). When used as a noun, a monthly usually refers to a magazine that publishes twelve issues per year.

People sometimes confuse frequency words: daily means every day, weekly means every week, monthly means every month, and yearly or annually means every year. Understanding these patterns helps you plan ahead, whether you're tracking how often you finish a book, when your favorite show releases new episodes, or how frequently you visit your grandparents.