Twey

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. An obsolete spelling of the number two, used in older English and Scots writing for the figure between one and three
2. A dated variant of the numeral two, found in older texts to denote the quantity that comes after one
3. An archaic form of the number two, appearing in early English and Scottish writing as a count of a pair

Etymology: "Twey" is an Archaic form of "two", and the form is a relic of how English once declined that number. Its ancestor is a feminine and neuter form of "twēġen", the older word that gave us "twain". The same root sits behind Latin "duo", Greek "dyo", and Russian "dva", which is why "two" has so many cousins across Europe and beyond. Here the history turns more interesting than it first looks. In Old English, "twā" was the form used for feminine and neuter nouns, while masculine nouns took "twēġen", so grammatical gender once shaped how people counted. Over time "twey" came to be used as a distinct word, meaning "two" in the sense of a pair, and this survives in the adjective here, "coming in pairs".