"terrible twos" meaning in English

See terrible twos in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

Head templates: {{en-noun|p}} terrible twos pl (plural only)
  1. (informal, psychology) A developmental stage in toddlers, normally occurring around the age of two, involving refusals and temper tantrums. Tags: informal, plural, plural-only Categories (topical): Psychology, Two
{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "p"
      },
      "expansion": "terrible twos pl (plural only)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English pluralia tantum",
          "parents": [
            "Pluralia tantum",
            "Nouns",
            "Lemmas"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Psychology",
          "orig": "en:Psychology",
          "parents": [
            "Social sciences",
            "Sciences",
            "Society",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Two",
          "orig": "en:Two",
          "parents": [
            "Numbers",
            "All topics",
            "Terms by semantic function",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1988 February, Working Mother, volume 11, number 2:",
          "text": "The terrible twos can begin at 18 months and last until about age five.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1990, Susan Hughes, Ryan: a mother's story of her hyperactive/Tourette syndrome child:",
          "text": "The terrible twos came early. Almost a year early. When Ryan learned to walk it was the end of our peace of mind!",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A developmental stage in toddlers, normally occurring around the age of two, involving refusals and temper tantrums."
      ],
      "id": "en-terrible_twos-en-noun-o7EWtNJd",
      "links": [
        [
          "psychology",
          "psychology"
        ],
        [
          "developmental",
          "developmental"
        ],
        [
          "stage",
          "stage"
        ],
        [
          "toddler",
          "toddler"
        ],
        [
          "refusal",
          "refusal"
        ],
        [
          "temper",
          "temper"
        ],
        [
          "tantrum",
          "tantrum"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal, psychology) A developmental stage in toddlers, normally occurring around the age of two, involving refusals and temper tantrums."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "informal",
        "plural",
        "plural-only"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "human-sciences",
        "psychology",
        "sciences"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "terrible twos"
}
{
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "p"
      },
      "expansion": "terrible twos pl (plural only)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English informal terms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English pluralia tantum",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned",
        "en:Psychology",
        "en:Two"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1988 February, Working Mother, volume 11, number 2:",
          "text": "The terrible twos can begin at 18 months and last until about age five.",
          "type": "quote"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1990, Susan Hughes, Ryan: a mother's story of her hyperactive/Tourette syndrome child:",
          "text": "The terrible twos came early. Almost a year early. When Ryan learned to walk it was the end of our peace of mind!",
          "type": "quote"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A developmental stage in toddlers, normally occurring around the age of two, involving refusals and temper tantrums."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "psychology",
          "psychology"
        ],
        [
          "developmental",
          "developmental"
        ],
        [
          "stage",
          "stage"
        ],
        [
          "toddler",
          "toddler"
        ],
        [
          "refusal",
          "refusal"
        ],
        [
          "temper",
          "temper"
        ],
        [
          "tantrum",
          "tantrum"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(informal, psychology) A developmental stage in toddlers, normally occurring around the age of two, involving refusals and temper tantrums."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "informal",
        "plural",
        "plural-only"
      ],
      "topics": [
        "human-sciences",
        "psychology",
        "sciences"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "terrible twos"
}

Download raw JSONL data for terrible twos meaning in English (1.5kB)

{
  "called_from": "form_description/20250107",
  "msg": "Form tags without form: desc='plural plural-only', tagsets=[('plural', 'plural-only')]",
  "path": [
    "terrible twos"
  ],
  "section": "English",
  "subsection": "noun",
  "title": "terrible twos",
  "trace": ""
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-01-13 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-01-01 using wiktextract (4ba5975 and 4ed51a5). 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.