What are the origins of the word Tween?

[Johanna]

One of Isaac Asimov’s earliest published stories was “Half-Breed,” written in June 1939 and published in 1940. Kids of mixed Terran-Martian parentage were labeled “Tweeny” and they built themselves a “Tweenytown.” This was approximately concurrent with Tolkien’s writing the first chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring (begun in December 1937), where he applied the term “tweens” to young Frodo. Asimov was a huge fan of Tolkien, but in 1939 he could not have known that J.R.R.T. was using the (approximately) same word, and obviously Tolkien would not have heard of Asimov, who wasn’t published until 1940. Coincidence. Besides, “A Long-Expected Party” was written about a year and a half before “Half-Breed” so Tolkien was first by any measure.

[Leo_Bloom]

@wolfpup

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.

– Ukridge and the Home from Home

Agreed. As Joyce referred to her, “the bustling tweeny-dawn-of-all-works (meed of anthems here we pant!) had not been many jiffies furbishing potlids, doorbrasses, scholars’ applecheeks and linkboy’s metals…"

[hajario]

There is a usage that I like that isn’t that old but applies to me. A person born in the 1960’s is called a Tweener. Not really a Boomer but not Gen X either. If you don’t remember the JFK assassination but do remember Watergate, you’re a Tweener.

[Johanna]

@hajario

There is a usage that I like that isn’t that old but applies to me. A person born in the 1960’s is called a Tweener. Not really a Boomer but not Gen X either. If you don’t remember the JFK assassination but do remember Watergate, you’re a Tweener.

That would be my younger sisters born in the 1960s. I was born in late 1959 and have memories from the JFK administration. I fall somewhere in between (heh) the core Baby Boom and your Tweeners. I figure I’m a kid sister to the Boomer generation: same generation, but born a little too late for all the hoopla. I just discovered that my tail end of the baby boom has been named “Generation Jones,” which as a name doesn’t impress me much, but there are significant differences between our situation and the main wave of the Baby Boom. My parents were born squarely in the middle of the “Silent Generation” and my children were born squarely in the middle of the “Millennials,” but my birth is way off on the shoulder of my generation’s road. Generations make for an extremely inexact science.