twice

adv
/twaɪs/

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.

  1. inherited from twīġes
  2. inherited from twies

Definitions

  1. Two times.

    • You should brush your teeth twice a day.
    • 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
  2. Doubled in quantity, intensity, or degree.

    • 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.
    • 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.
    • MARY: As you go from left to right, each example has twice as many twos; from right to left, twice as few.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

A definitional loop anchored at twice. Each word in the ring is defined by the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself. Scroll to it and watch.

01twice02times03biography04published05publish06sale07bidder08auction09bid

A definitional loop anchored at twice. Each word in the ring appears in the definition of the next; follow the chain far enough and it folds back on itself.

9 hops · closes at twice

curated · pre-corpus. live cycle detection across the full graph is the next major milestone.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA