Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The state or condition of being two; doubleness; duplicity.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The state or condition of being two; duality; doubleness; duplicity.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From two +‎ -ness.

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Examples

  • _Vexirfehler_ appears we should have to say that one point is above the threshold for twoness, which is a queer contradiction, to say the least.

    Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 Containing Sixteen Experimental Investigations from the Harvard Psychological Laboratory. Various 1889

  • Simpson continued to struggle with the "twoness" described by W.E.B. Du Bois in "The Souls of Black Folk" nearly a century ago -- the higher he reached for trappings of the white world, the more he distanced himself from his beginnings.

    Day & Night 2008

  • But the sick person either never develops his identity, or else cannot tolerate his "twoness," or separation.

    One Cosmos 2009

  • One ever feels his twoness, -- an American, a Negro; two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. from "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" in The Souls of Black Folk.

    sunday culture. ithiliana 2010

  • Protected from the usual childhood troughs of emotion by their twoness.

    Bad Dad Alex Austin 2011

  • One ever feels his twoness, –an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder 214-215.

    W. E. B. Du Bois, Carol Swain, and African-American Duality 2009

  • It was rewarding that God used us to help other twins experience the joy of “oneness” in their “twoness.”

    Chicken Soup for the Soul: Twins and More Jack Canfield 2009

  • It was rewarding that God used us to help other twins experience the joy of “oneness” in their “twoness.”

    Chicken Soup for the Soul: Twins and More Jack Canfield 2009

  • However, the hyphenated identity of African-American came into widespread use during the 1980s, and it encapsulates graphically, on the page and in the mind, the “twoness” that Du Bois describes.

    W. E. B. Du Bois, Carol Swain, and African-American Duality 2009

  • But -- with a "twoness of being" that DuBois probably didn't imagine when he coined the term -- it was a deeply conflicted moment.

    Terrance Heath: Marriage Matters to Us 2008

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