twice

English

English numbers ^(edit)

	20
[a], [b] ←  1	2	3  → [a], [b]
Cardinal: two     Ordinal: second     Latinate ordinal: secondary     Reverse order ordinal: second to last, second from last, last but one     Latinate reverse order ordinal: penultimate     Adverbial: two times, twice     Multiplier: twofold     Latinate multiplier: double     Distributive: doubly     Group collective: both, pair, twosome     Multipart collective: doublet, couple, couplet     Greek or Latinate collective: dyad     Metric collective prefix: double-     Greek collective prefix: di-, duo-     Latinate collective prefix: bi-     Fractional: half     Metric fractional prefix: demi-     Latinate fractional prefix: semi-     Greek fractional prefix: hemi-     Elemental: twin, doublet     Greek prefix: deutero-     Number of musicians: duo, duet, duplet     Number of years: biennium

Etymology

From earlier twise, from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] Middle English twies, twiȝes, from (deprecated template usage) [etyl] 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 (“twies”). Compare also twi- meaning two or both.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /twaɪs/, [tw̥aɪs]

• Audio (US):

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• Audio:

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• Rhymes: -aɪs

Adverb

twice (not comparable)

1. Two times.
   • 1898, Winston Churchill, chapter 5, in The Celebrity:

     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.

   • 1934, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town

     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.

2. (usually with "as", of a specified quality) Doubled in quantity, intensity, or degree.
   • 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:

     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.

   • 1896, Livingston Stone, Domesticated Trout: How to Breed and Grow Them, fourth edition, page 304:

     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.

   • 1952, Peter Lincoln Spencer, Building mathematical concepts in the elementary school, page 139:

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

   • 1995, Louise Corti, Heather Laurie, Shirley Dex, Highly Qualified Women, Great Britain. Dept. of Employment, page 18:

     Both men and women with higher qualifications were twice as less likely to be unemployed than their less qualified counterparts.

Synonyms

• two times

Derived terms

• a broken clock is right twice a day
• two-time
• twice as less

Translations

two times

• Arabic: مَرَتَيْن (maratayn)
• Armenian: երկու անգամ (erku angam), երկիցս (hy) (erkicʻs)
• Breton: div wech (br)
• Catalan: dos cops, dues vegades
• Cebuano: makaduha, kaduha
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 兩次／两次 (zh), 两次 (zh) (liǎng cì), 两倍 (zh) (liǎng bèi)

• Classical Nahuatl: ōppa
• Czech: dvakrát (cs)
• Danish: to gange
• Dutch: twee keer, tweemaal (nl)
• Esperanto: dufoje (eo)
• Estonian: kaks korda
• Faliscan: pis (pis)
• Finnish: kaksi kertaa (fi), kahdesti (fi)
• French: deux fois
• Galician: dúas veces f pl
• Georgian: ორჯერ (orǯer)
• German: zweimal (de), doppelt (de)
• Greek: δις (el) (dis)

  Ancient Greek: δίς (dís), δυάκις (duákis)

• Hebrew: פעמיים \ פַּעֲמַיִם (pa'amáyim), שְׁתֵּי פְּעָמִים (he) (sh'téi p'amím)
• Hungarian: kétszer (hu)
• Icelandic: tvisvar (is), tvívegis (is)
• Irish: faoi dhó, dhá uair
• Italian: due volte
• Japanese: 二度 (ja) (にど, nido), 二回 (にかい, nikai) (for frequency), 二倍 (にばい, nibai) (for scale ratio)
• (deprecated template usage) {{trans-mid}}
• Korean: 두번 (dubeon)
• Kurdish:

  Sorani:

• Latin: bis (la)
• Latvian: divreiz, divas reizes f pl
• Lithuanian: du kartus, dukart
• Luxembourgish: zweemol
• Maori: taurua
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: to ganger

• Old English: tweowa
• Persian: دوبار (fa) (dobar)
• Polish: dwukrotnie (pl)
• Portuguese: duas vezes, duplamente (pt)
• Russian: два́жды (ru) (dváždy), два ра́за (dva ráza)
• Scottish Gaelic: dà uair
• Serbo-Croatian:

  Cyrillic: два́пут

  Latin: dváput (sh)

• Slovak: dvakrát
• Slovene: dvakrat (sl)
• Spanish: dos veces, doblemente
• Swedish: två gånger
• Tagalog: makalawa
• Ukrainian: двічі (dviči)
• Welsh: dwywaith
• Zulu: kabili

See also

• once
• thrice