Word.ws English Dictionary

two-step

two-step noun: a ballroom dance in duple time, having long, sliding steps.

Noun

two-step (plural two-steps)

  1. A ballroom dance in duple time, having long, sliding steps.
    • Square dances were the feature of the evening, but waltzes, two-steps, and a Dan Tucker were also very popular.1914, Lisgar Collegiate Institute, Vox Lycei Spring 1914, page 31
    • The dancing shadows on the wall / (The two-step in the hall)1977, Jeff Lynne, “Turn to Stone”, performed by Electric Light Orchestra
  2. A dance move consisting of two steps in approximately the same direction onto the same foot, separated by a joining or uniting step with the other foot.
  3. A piece of music for this dance.

Adjective

two-step (not comparable)

  1. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see two, step.
    • Films corrupted by blotches are often restored in a two-step approach.2000, A. Hanjalic, G.C. Langelaar, P.M.B. van Roosmalen, Image and Video Databases: Restoration, Watermarking and Retrieval, →ISBN, page 14
    • The data lake, in turn, supports a two-step process to analyze the data.2014, Pethuru Raj, Ganesh Chandra Deka, editors, Handbook of Research on Cloud Infrastructures for Big Data Analytics, IGI Global, page 105

Verb

two-step (third-person singular simple present two-steps, present participle two-stepping, simple past and past participle two-stepped)

  1. (intransitive) To dance the two-step.
  2. (figuratively) To move around as if dancing a two-step.
    • Pacing off on average 25 kilometers a day, month after month, we two-stepped around roaring superhighways, under bullet-train bridges, through megacities of 22 million that took a week to traverse, as well as past dams, mines, airports, and industrial parks—a buzzing tableau you’d expect from...2024, Paul Salopek, New Map: Ancient Roads of China, National Geographichttps://outofedenwalk.nationalgeographic.org/articles/2024-07-new-map-ancient-roads-china

Forms of two-step

Noun
pluraltwo-steps
Verb
third-person singular presenttwo-steps
present participletwo-stepping
past participletwo-stepped
pasttwo-stepped

Words formed from two-step

Questions about two-step

What does two-step mean?
Two-step means a ballroom dance in duple time, having long, sliding steps.
What part of speech is two-step?
Two-step can be a noun, an adjective or a verb.
What is the plural of two-step?
The plural of two-step is two-steps.

Words near two-step in the dictionary

  1. two-spotted spider mite
  2. two-spotted spider mites
  3. two-start
  4. two-state solution
  5. two-stater
  6. two-step
  7. two-stepped
  8. two-stepping
  9. two-steps
  10. two-striped grasshopper
  11. two-striped grasshoppers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: two-step (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: “two-step.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/two-step. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.