twice
Language: English
Part of speech: adv
Pronunciation: ipa: /twaɪs/
ipa: [tw̥aɪs]
rhymes: -aɪs
Etymology: From earlier twise, from Middle English twies, twiȝes, from Old English twīġes (“twice”), from twīwa, twīġa ("twice"; whence Middle English twie (“twice”)) + -es (adverbial genitive ending). Related to Saterland Frisian twäie (“twice”), Middle Low German twiges, twies (“twice”), Middle High German zwies (“twice”). Equivalent to twi- (“(in) two; both”) + -ce. Similarly constructed to the prefixes bis- and dis-, borrowed from Indo-European cognates.
Senses: examples: text: You should brush your teeth twice a day.
text: No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. (1947, Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution, Section 1)
text: I've done with my tirade. The world was gone; / The twice two thousand, for whom earth was made, / Were vanish'd to be what they call alone
ref: 1824, Lord Byron, “Canto the Thirteenth”, in Don Juan:
text: He could not be induced to remain permanently at Mohair because Miss Trevor was at Asquith, but he appropriated a Hempstead cart from the Mohair stables and made the trip sometimes twice in a day.
ref: 1897 December (indicated as 1898), Winston Churchill, chapter V, in The Celebrity: An Episode, New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company; London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., →OCLC:
text: Santa Claus is coming to town / He’s making a list, / And checking it twice, / He’s gonna find out who’s naughty or nice / Santa Claus is coming to town
ref: 1934, J. Fred Coots, Haven Gillespie, “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”:
text: Malay is the lingua franca of several Southeast Asia countries and has been simplified by its use as a second language by non-native speakers.
For example, the Malay plural is formed by repeating a word twice – buku means book and buku-buku means books.
ref: 2021 April 25, John Malathronas, “Which languages are easiest – and most difficult – for native English speakers to learn?”, in CNN:
glosses: Two times.
examples: text: Thus it appears that if the machine is turning twice as slow as before, there is more than twice the former quantity in the rising buckets; and more will be raised in a minute by the same expenditure of power.
ref: 1826, John Nicholson, The Operative Mechanic, and British Machinist: Being a Practical Display of the Manufactories and Mechanical Arts of the United Kingdom, volume 1, H.C. Carey & I. Lea, page 78:
text: You can't get anything thinner than a spring shad, unless you take a couple of them, when, of course, they will be twice as thin.
ref: 1896, Livingston Stone, Domesticated Trout: How to Breed and Grow Them, 4th edition, page 304:
text: MARY: As you go from left to right, each example has twice as many twos; from right to left, twice as few.
ref: 1952, Peter Lincoln Spencer, Building mathematical concepts in the elementary school, page 139:
text: This was eventually absorbed in the enlarged Victoria Station which was brought into use at the end of March, 1884, providing twice as much platform accommodation as the old one.
ref: 1957 October 23, M. D. Greville and G. O. Holt, “Railway Development in Manchester—2”, in Railway Magazine, page 731:
text: Both men and women with higher qualifications were twice as less likely to be unemployed than their less qualified counterparts.
ref: 1995, Louise Corti, Heather Laurie, Shirley Dex, Highly Qualified Women, Great Britain. Dept. of Employment, page 18:
glosses: Doubled in quantity, intensity, or degree.
raw_tags: of a specified quality
with "as"
Synonyms: word: double
word: doubly
word: two times
word: bis
word: twice
word: twicet
word: twofold
Hypernyms: word: often
word: sometimes
Derived terms: a broken clock is right twice a day
any day of the week and twice on Sunday
any day of the week and twice on Sundays
a stopped clock is right twice a day
at twice
buy the same horse twice
even a stopped clock is right twice a day
every day of the week and twice on Sunday
every day of the week and twice on Sundays
first cousin twice removed
hit the ball twice
I don't boil my cabbage twice
I don't chew my cabbage twice
lightning does not strike twice in the same place
lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place
lightning never strikes the same place twice
lightning never strikes twice
lightning never strikes twice in the same place
measure twice and cut once
money won is twice as sweet as money earned
once a man, twice a boy
once a man, twice a child
once a woman, twice a child
once or twice
opportunity seldom knocks twice
strike twice
the candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long
think twice
twice as less
twice-baked bread
twice-borrowed
twice-exceptional
twice-exceptionality
twice-laid
twice removed
twice-stabbed stink bug
twice-told
twice-weekly
twice-yearly
you can't step in the same river twice
Related terms: word: once
word: thrice
word: two-time
word: frequency