Word.ws English Dictionary

four by twos

four by twos is the plural of four by two.

Meaning of four by two

Noun

four by two (plural four by twos)

  1. (Australia, New Zealand, UK) A length of sawn wood of cross section 4 inches by 2 inches, most often employed as structural framing lumber / timber.
    • She would sit here sometimes, perched on a bag of concrete looking at the big lumps of four by two and imagining what she might do with them if she had a chance.1994, Peter Carey, Collected Stories, page 206
    Synonyms:
    two by four
  2. (Australia, UK) A cotton cloth 4 inches wide with lines two inches apart, conveniently torn into two inch lengths for cleaning a rifle barrel using a pull through.
  3. (Cockney, slang) A Jew.

Questions about four by twos

What is four by twos the plural of?
Four by twos is the plural of four by two.

Words near four by twos in the dictionary

  1. four ales
  2. four and twenty
  3. Four Ashes
  4. Four Books and Five Classics
  5. four by two
  6. four by twos
  7. Four Classic Novels
  8. four color
  9. four color problem
  10. four color theorem
  11. four colors

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: four by twos (page history and authors); four by two (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “four by twos.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/four_by_twos. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.