twinner

English

Etymology

twin +‎ -er

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -ɪnə(ɹ)

Noun

twinner (plural twinners)

1. One who gives birth to twins; a breeder of twins.
   • 1557 February 13, Thomas Tusser, A Hundreth Good Pointes of Husbandrie., London: […] Richard Tottel, →OCLC; republished London: […] Robert Triphook, […], and William Sancho, […], 1810, →OCLC:

     Ewes yeerly by twinning rich maisters doo make,
     the lamb of such twinners for breeders go take

   • 1865, The Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal ..., page 777:

     In the former or first four pregnancies the proportion of twinners in a hundred twinners is smaller than the proportion of child-bearers in a hundred : […]

2. One who visits or interacts with a sister city of their own city.
   • 1993, John Lofland, Polite Protesters: The American Peace Movement of the 1980s, Syracuse University Press, →ISBN, page 58:

     Beyond correspondence, twinners around the country got very interested in elaborating their relation to their paired city by visiting it.

3. (fiction, uncommon) One who is identical, is similar, or is a counterpart, to another person.
   • 2016, John C. Tibbetts, The Gothic Worlds of Peter Straub, McFarland, →ISBN, page 149:

     The twinner of Jack's ailing mother, a faded movie actress named Lily Cavanaugh (who was billed in her time as the “Queen of the B Movies”),  […]

   • 2020, Debbie Olson, Children and Childhood in the Works of Stephen King, Lexington Books, →ISBN, page 185:

     Everyone, that is, except for Jack; his twinner, Jason, died as a baby and has become something of a mythical character in the alternate world,  […]

See also

• doppelganger
• evil twin

Further reading

• “twinner”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.