What is an appropriate noun for describing how often something takes place?

Question

Hello, good people of EnglishForward! I am looking for an appropriate English noun that describes how often something happens. For example, World Cup takes place every four years. Assuming I did not know about it and wanted to ask someone how often World Cup takes place, how should I phrase my question? I mean, I could just say "How often does World Cup take place?" but what if I wanted to say "What is the 'the appropriate noun I'm looking for' of World Cup?" Does 'period' work here? Any suggestions or is there any word spoken commonly by people?

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

frequency

With what frequency does the World Cup take place?

There is no word for the blank you give in your example.

What is the ____ of the World Cup?

If you said frequency, it would be understood in that blank, but it's not idiomatic English.

periodicity is so abstract and scientific that it would cause laughter in that blank, even though it fits in meaning.
______________

Why do you need a noun anyway? Everybody says "How often?" and it's the standard way to ask the question. Why invent your own English language when we already have one?

CJ

Clee102 · Answer

Thank you for your kind reply, CalifJim

I guess the reason why I'm asking this is probably because I'm not a native English speaker.

In fact, I'm Korean and I well know the way Korean is spoken is certainly and almost completely different from the way English is spoken.

I've spoken English for about a decade but even so, since it isn't my mother language, I don't have "feeling" of what sounds natural if you know what I mean.

Of course, if I were to ask someone the question, I would just ask "how often does ... blah blah blah" because that's much much simpler. I mean.. yeah, why go through a hassle of inventing my own English?

It is just out of mere curiosity to see if there exists such a word that fits into that sentence.

Sometimes I get questions from Korean people that are like

"Hey, how do you say 'this' in English?"

and often those make me dumbfounded because most times, they are not the ways in which English speakers would put.

So.. yeah! It's been almost a decade but I believe there's still a long way to go to call myself a "perfect" English speaker, though I doubt if there is such a thing as "perfect" in a language.

Thanks again for your help, kind sir / ma'am !

CalifJim · Answer

clee102I don't have "feeling" of what sounds natural if you know what I mean.

I do know what you mean. I find the same when I speak another language.

clee102It is just out of mere curiosity to see if there exists such a word that fits into that sentence.

Ah. OK.

clee102Thanks again for your help, kind sir / ma'am !

You're welcome, and "Jim" is a man's name, by the way!

CJ

Clee102 · Answer

CalifJimYou're welcome, and "Jim" is a man's name, by the way!

Well... obviously.. haha.

But I believe nicknames / ID's / code names / user names or whatever that are used online to call one selves do not necessarily reflect their gender. (by the way, do I say 'gender' or 'genders' here?)

You know.. it could be possible that there's this imaginary video game with a protagonist called Jim who introduces himself as a caliph and some female gamer decided to refer to that character in her user name or something...

What I'm trying to say is, it may turn out to be a hasty judgment and I would like to avoid making one.

That was little random, I guess... well, just saying ~

What is an appropriate noun for describing how often something takes place?

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