"four by two" meaning in English

See four by two in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Audio: EN-AU ck1 four by two.ogg [Australia] Forms: four by twos [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} four by two (plural four by twos)
  1. (Australia, UK, New Zealand) A length of sawn wood of cross section 4 inches by 2 inches, most often employed as structural framing lumber / timber. Tags: Australia, New-Zealand, UK Categories (topical): Carpentry Synonyms (length of wood): two by four [US] Hypernyms (length of wood): dimensional lumber [US], dimension lumber [US] Translations (sawn wood of cross section 4" by 2"): kakkosnelonen (Finnish)
    Sense id: en-four_by_two-en-noun-vWZjd6Lv Disambiguation of Carpentry: 53 29 18 Categories (other): Australian English, British English, New Zealand English Disambiguation of 'length of wood': 90 10 0 Disambiguation of 'length of wood': 90 10 0 Disambiguation of 'sawn wood of cross section 4" by 2"': 88 7 5
  2. (UK, Australia, military) 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. Tags: Australia, UK Categories (topical): Military Synonyms: four-by-two
    Sense id: en-four_by_two-en-noun-6WN2OAl0 Categories (other): Australian English, British English, English entries with incorrect language header, English entries with topic categories using raw markup, English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 34 55 11 Disambiguation of English entries with topic categories using raw markup: 38 51 11 Disambiguation of English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys: 35 47 18 Topics: government, military, politics, war
  3. (Cockney rhyming slang) A Jew. Tags: Cockney, slang Categories (topical): Judaism, People
    Sense id: en-four_by_two-en-noun-rdxg4eSM Disambiguation of Judaism: 8 17 74 Disambiguation of People: 8 9 82

Inflected forms

Alternative forms

Download JSON data for four by two meaning in English (5.1kB)

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    {
      "form": "four by twos",
      "tags": [
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          "_dis": "53 29 18",
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        {
          "ref": "1994, Peter Carey, Collected Stories, page 206",
          "text": "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.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2009, Joy Dettman, Pearl in a Cage, page 110",
          "text": "He eyed Norman, who was lifting one end of a four-by-two and sighting down it, as his Bendigo uncle had taught him to sight new beams, seeking out the bow.",
          "type": "quotation"
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        {
          "ref": "2010, Glenn Wheatley, Glenn Wheatley: Facing the Music, page 109",
          "text": "I found myself in overalls, work boots, gloves and protective glasses splitting planks of four-by-two and stacking them on pallets.[…]From rock star to Rajah of the Radio (Paul Keating′s line) to the ARIA Hall of Fame to being John Farnham′s manager for twenty-five years to a convicted criminal splitting four-by-twos.",
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        "A length of sawn wood of cross section 4 inches by 2 inches, most often employed as structural framing lumber / timber."
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          "_dis1": "88 7 5",
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          "word": "kakkosnelonen"
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          "_dis": "34 55 11",
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        "(UK, Australia, military) 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."
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      ],
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  "sounds": [
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      "audio": "EN-AU ck1 four by two.ogg",
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      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/EN-AU_ck1_four_by_two.ogg",
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          "type": "quotation"
        },
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          "ref": "2009, Joy Dettman, Pearl in a Cage, page 110",
          "text": "He eyed Norman, who was lifting one end of a four-by-two and sighting down it, as his Bendigo uncle had taught him to sight new beams, seeking out the bow.",
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          "ref": "2010, Glenn Wheatley, Glenn Wheatley: Facing the Music, page 109",
          "text": "I found myself in overalls, work boots, gloves and protective glasses splitting planks of four-by-two and stacking them on pallets.[…]From rock star to Rajah of the Radio (Paul Keating′s line) to the ARIA Hall of Fame to being John Farnham′s manager for twenty-five years to a convicted criminal splitting four-by-twos.",
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        "(Australia, UK, New Zealand) A length of sawn wood of cross section 4 inches by 2 inches, most often employed as structural framing lumber / timber."
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        "(UK, Australia, military) 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."
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      "sense": "length of wood",
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      "word": "two by four"
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      "code": "fi",
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      "sense": "sawn wood of cross section 4\" by 2\"",
      "word": "kakkosnelonen"
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}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.