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PARTIAL ENGLISH COVERAGE · FULL CORPUS REMAINS LOCAL4 source sections across 3 headwords matching “Twain”. These are separate from the reviewed results below.
TwainEnglish (en) · Unnumbered etymologySource text
English surname meaning "divided in two," from the numeral/adjective twain.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗TWAINEnglish (en) · Unnumbered etymologySource text
From twain, in reference to a line in Rudyard Kipling's poem The Ballad of East and West: "never the twain shall meet". This was chosen to reflect the difficulty, at the time, of connecting scanners and personal computers.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗twainEnglish (en) · Etymology 1Source text
Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁ Proto-Germanic *twai Proto-West Germanic *twai-der. Old English twēġen Middle English tweyne English twain PIE word *dwóh₁ From Middle English tweyne, tweien, twaine, from Old English twēġen m (“two”), from Proto-West Germanic *twai-, from Proto-Germanic *twai, from Proto-Indo-European *dwóh₁. Cognate with Saterland Frisian twäin, Low German twene, German zween. More at two. The word outlasted the breakdown of gender in Middle English and survived as a secondary form of two, then especially in the cases where the numeral follows a noun. Its continuation into modern times was aided by its use in KJV, the Marriage Service, in poetry (where it is commonly used as a rhyme word), and in oral use where it is necessary to be clear that two and not to or too is meant.
Original Wiktionary entry and references ↗twainEnglish (en) · Etymology 2Source text
From Middle English twaynen, from twayne (“two”, numeral) (see Etymology 1 above).
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