Tween is a word used or perhaps even coined by J.R.R. Tolkien to describe Hobbits in their reckless twenties. This is because Hobbits were not considered adults until age 33 and live significantly longer than Men.
Wiki claims that Tolkien coined the wordand it may well be true but I was wondering if any proof of this could be found or if a prior use exists to refute it.
I am hoping **samclem **comes to the rescue on this one or anyone else that might now how to determine it.
This is like when the Greeks invented something, and then someone else invented it later, and had never heard of the Greek one. The people who coined ‘tween’ in its current usage were referencing ‘between’ and 'teen, not Tolkien.
Yes, you’re right: Tolkien’s use of “tween” is derived from “twenty” + “teen”, though I don’t find it unlikely that he also had “between” at the back of his mind for that too.
That would make them some kind of editor, I think!
“Teen” of course comes from “teen-ager” which references adolescents from thirteen to nineteen, and distinguishes them from younger children, as “boys” and “girls” would not.
“Tween” was coined as a parallel to “teen” and means those young people at what sociologists call “older childhood,” i.e., the years between ten and their teen years.
And Tolkien got there by a long and winding road that goes ever on…
Just found this thread, and can’t comment on the Tolkien connection just yet. Haven’t looked.
But, the term “tween” to designate kids of 11-13 or so has been used since the late 1970s. “Tween-age” can be found as far back as 1938, with “tween-ager” being found in the late '40s.
I’ll snoop around and see about the Tolkien connection.
Note the gaps – it did not catch on at once, and was rarely used until recently.
The Tolkien connection seems unlikely since none of the OED citatations are from non-North-American sources. And, certainly, if it had been in LOTR (in this connection), they would have mentioned it.
Not related at all, but you also get a tween in the world of graphic design. It’s the morphing action between two shapes. It’s a funny word when you think about it too much. As is between.
Epic, I think we 20-29 folk should take this word back, unless there’s any proof of usage prior to 1954 he set the record and taking it back should be a tribute to him.
I can understand why you might think there isn’t. Finding such evidence would require a great deal of work, like, say, reading the entire 14-post thread before you posted.
Fans of P. G. Wodehouse will know that there’s an even earlier use of “tween”, also derived from “between”, in the obsolete British colloquialism “tweeny” meaning an in-between maid, a lowly maid who waits on both the cook and housemaid (or sometimes cook, housemaid, and butler) and whose duties are therefore in between the functions of both or all three. Thus, for instance:
The proceeds of the venture had been split up from the first – in proportions decided upon at a preliminary conference – between myself, the butler, the two parlourmaids, the two housemaids, the cook, the tweeny, and the boy who cleaned the boots. I rang the bell and instructed the butler to summon the shareholders for an extraordinary meeting.
And presently in they filed – the boy who cleaned the boots, the tweeny, the cook, the two housemaids, and the butler. The females got chairs, the males stood against the wall, and I sat on the desk, and, after a few formalities, rose and explained the situation which had arisen.
Considering what a bolt from the blue it was, I must admit that they all took it pretty well. True, the cook burst into tears and said something about the Wrath of the Lord and the Cities of the Plain – she being a bit on the Biblical side, and one of the housemaids had hysterics. But you have to expect that sort of thing at a critical meeting of the shareholders. Somebody lent the cook a handkerchief, and the tweeny soothed the housemaid, and then we settled down to bend our brains to it.
It goes back much further that that in the nautical expression “'tween decks,” i.e. the space between two continuous hulls, found throughout the 19th century. Doyle uses it in the Holmes story, The “Gloria Scott”:
Google Books has multiple uses of “tween” in many contexts, all of them shortenings of between. My favorites are the truly awful poetry of Cecile Macneill Thomson in the volume ‘Tween the Gloamin’ and the Mirk: Poems and Songs, the Klad-ezee “Tweener” also from 1949, and the insecticide named Tween.
