twinning

1. 1
   verb

   Present participle of twin.

   The council is twinning the town with a city in France.

   Engineers are twinning the two data centers for backup.

   Note

   Behind the participle stands a verb that once pulled in opposite directions: to twin could mean to separate or divide, and also to join or unite. The joining meaning is the live one, now especially for places in different countries. It usually appears in the passive, so a town is twinned with another, while the active is twinning puts the council in charge, as in the town-pairing noun.

2. 2
   noununcountable

   An arrangement in which two towns, or other similar places, are formally paired as partners.

   The twinning of Oxford and a German city dates back decades.

   Several councils approved new twinning agreements this year.

   Similarpairing, partnership, linking

3. 3
   noununcountable

   The biological process of producing two offspring in a single pregnancy.

   Twinning occurs more often in older mothers.

   Researchers studied the genetics behind twinning in cattle.

4. 4
   noununcountable

   The act of delivering two offspring in a single birth.

   Her twinning was attended by two midwives.

   The flock's high rate of twinning pleased the shepherd.

5. 5
   adjective

   Yielding two offspring from a single pregnancy.

   Breeders select for twinning traits in their flocks.

   A twinning mare is uncommon among horses.

   Note

   An adjective with no degrees: a ewe or mare is twinning or it is not, and nothing is ever more twinning than another. It usually comes before the noun, as in a twinning breed or twinning traits. Biparous is the technical equivalent, suited to zoological writing, while twinning is the plainer word breeders and farmers reach for.

6. 6
   noununcountable

   The conversion of a road into a divided highway, with separate lanes for each direction of traffic.

   The twinning of the interstate took three years to complete.

   Local officials approved funding for the highway's twinning.

   Note

   Road engineering takes the word literally and builds the second twin. A new roadway is laid alongside the existing one and separated from it by a median, so each direction of traffic gets its own carriageway. The payoff is greater capacity and fewer head-on collisions. The finished road is a dual carriageway, and the work itself is the twinning of the road.

7. 7
   noununcountable

   The formation of twin crystals, two or more crystals intergrown in a symmetrical, related orientation.

   Twinning in quartz often produces visible boundary lines.

   Geologists noted extensive twinning in the rock sample.

   Note

   A mineralogist's word for crystals that grow together by rule rather than by accident. Two or more individuals of the same species share certain lattice points and are related by a twin law, typically a reflection across a mirror plane or a rotation about a twin axis. The noun counts naturally here, and a single sample may show several twinnings.

8. 8
   noununcountable

   A form of identity transformation in which a subject changes into a copy or clone of another person.

   The novel's twinning left two identical versions of the same man.

   Through twinning, the spy took on the exact appearance of the ambassador.

   Similarduplication, cloning

   Note

   A term that belongs to the vocabulary of paraphilias and transformation fantasy. Within that field it names one specific outcome: the subject becomes a duplicate of a particular, existing person. Its context is sexual or fictional. In ordinary discussion of doubles or look-alikes, plainer words such as copying or cloning avoid the association.

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