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two-by-four

two-by-four

9 3.1
A piece of wood about two inches by four inches used for building
  • noun
  • /ˈtuːbaɪˈfɔːr/
  • Specialized
translation icon : dos por cuatro
  • Those tracks you see in the distance, extending out of the town, are nothing more than two-by-fours stacked one after another in a row.
  • nail a two-by-four
  • cut a two-by-four
  • two-by-four frame

But we spent all day building this thing out of two by fours.

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Examples

  • The minute the trees get big enough for timber, you'll just cut them down to make two-by-fours.

    Fiction book (2002)
  • There's some two-by-fours in the closet.

  • I want you to cut off all the ends of all these two-by-fours.

  • A ladder made from two-by-fours led up to it.

    Fiction book (2002)
  • The sweet fragrance of the milk drew it forward across the wooden two-by-fours of the bedroom floor.

    Fiction book (1995)
  • No, we use two by fours as the braces of this thing and like nailed them together.

  • The back wall, the one made of plywood and two-by-fours, looked impressive, even intimidating, from this side.

    Fiction book (1992)
  • I'm using a reciprocating saw on these two-by-fours, it doesn't seem to work.

  • He'd laid down two-by-fours and bolted them to the cement floor.

    Fiction book (1993)
  • To build the frame, we used several two-by-fours cut to the desired lengths.

Synonyms

board
vstwo-by-four
274 1.0

A long flat piece of wood used for building or making furniture

is a regularly sized construction piece with a fixed narrow rectangular cross section
plank
vstwo-by-four
56 1.7

A long flat piece of wood used in building, like a floor or step

is a regularly sized construction piece with a fixed narrow rectangular cross section

Surface Forms

two-by-four singular
two-by-fours plural

Morphology

two-by-four = two + four (transparent) = by + two + four

The meaning is directly derived from the numeric dimensions 'two by four' and learners who know the numbers and 'by' can infer the dimensional sense. [Postprocessing: moved 'by' from base_words to prefix]

Etymology

Two-by-four comes from its simple size: two, by, four, meaning 'two inches by four inches', so the name tells you the common size of the wood used to build frames and walls.