two-up
two-up noun: a game of chance, played by betting on the outcome of two pennies thrown in the air.
Noun
two-up (uncountable)
- A game of chance, played by betting on the outcome of two pennies thrown in the air.
- From the image of a wily digger playing two-up, to a prime minister at the track or the tables, the construction of gambling is as an activity quintessentially Australian.1993, Ernest Hunter, Aboriginal Health and History: Power and Prejudice in Remote Australia, page 242
- The origins of two-up remain obscure. It probably derived from ‘pitch and toss’, a game British youths had played since the late eighteenth century. In Australia pitch and toss was first recorded in the 1850s on the Victorian goldfields, and in New Zealand as a street game on the West Coast in the...1994, David Malcolm Grant, On a Roll: A History of Gambling and Lotteries in New Zealand, page 66
- Synonyms:
- swy, swy-up
Adjective
two-up (not comparable)
- Having two document pages per printed page.
Adverb
two-up (not comparable)
- With two people aboard.
- Some of us rode two-up as we travelled in convoy to the beach.
Examples of two-up in a sentence
- Two-up evolved as a variant, becoming popular in Australia in the early 1890s, and in New Zealand a year or two later, as labouring men from both countries traversed the Tasman Sea in search of work.1994, David Malcolm Grant, On a Roll: A History of Gambling and Lotteries in New Zealand, page 66:
- Perversely, Scorps chooses not to punt on Anzac Day and won′t go near two-up, probably because his losses will be too public.2008, Sam De Brito, The Lost Boys, page 280:
Synonyms of two-up
- swy
- swy-up
Forms of two-up
| alternative form | two up |
|---|---|
| alternative form | 2-up |
Origin of two-up
From two + up.
Questions about two-up
- What does two-up mean?
- Two-up means a game of chance, played by betting on the outcome of two pennies thrown in the air.
- How do you use two-up in a sentence?
- Two-up evolved as a variant, becoming popular in Australia in the early 1890s, and in New Zealand a year or two later, as labouring men from both countries traversed the Tasman Sea in search of work.
- What part of speech is two-up?
- Two-up can be a noun, an adjective or an adverb.
Words near two-up in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: two-up (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.
Last updated:
Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-two-up.ogg.
Cite this entry: “two-up.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/two-up. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.