Wiktionary
a. 1 measuring two inches by four inches 2 (context by extension English) small or cramped n. A length of timber having this cross section. (Note: often this is dimensional lumber that was this size BEFORE being planed to finished form, which removes a quarter inch from each side.)
WordNet
n. a timber measuring (slightly under) 2 inches by 4 inches in cross section
Usage examples of "two-by-four".
Talbot tried to club Blackburn with the two-by-four, so Blackburn scooted away and then tossed them the hacksaw.
I followed him through the tiny disorganised house and out to the back yard, where he set the baby down in a sandpile framed with two-by-fours.
A real cattleguard, consisting of ten or fifteen steel rails or two-by-fours set six to eight inches apart and laid across a dug-out section of road, kept cows, afraid of plunging a hoof between the rails and maybe breaking a leg, from crossing.
A few years into his career, he clearly decided that baseball professionals would benefit from being smacked on the head by a two-by-four.
After a talking dog, or an invisible man with an impossible two-by-four, what's a bicorporal harlot?
But a couple hundred dollars' worth of plywood, a few two-by-fours and some tin and cardboard, Bill can throw this buddy up again and start rentin'.
I didn't catch on at the time, but give me time and clobber me over the head with a two-by-four and eventually I'll catch on to anything.
Two couples were swaying to a ballad that welled from a jukebox encaged in chicken wire and two-by-fours.
You'd read this great resume, the guy would up and give a good interview, and as soon as he le job, he'd turn into a brain-dead lame donkey you n't move with a flaming two-by-four shoved up his Half the time you couldn't lop off the deadwood in : place because they'd sue for one kind of discrim- or another-gender, age, race, whatever.
A long makeshift table had been built out of two-by-fours and particle board, and was stacked with paper, electronic equipment, and a computer with a printer.
My nose tickled at the scent of two-by-fours and sanded plaster, and I sneezed.
Then, with Rya's help, I carried eight two-by-fours from the nearest stack of supplies and laid them on the floor, crossed like Lincoln Logs, to form a step stool of sorts.
He swung the two-by-four not from overhead, not like a woodsman wielding an ax, but low from his side, like a golfer teeing off.
The man's feet dangled off one of the two-by-fours a distance of a foot or so.
The formal dining room has been converted to a nanny-barracks with bunk beds hammered together from unfinished two-by-fours, the parlor filled with cribs and changing-tables, and every square centimeter of cheap shag carpet in the place has been infused with a few dozen flakes of glitter, in various festive colors, which if they even cared about getting rid of it could only be removed through direct microsurgical extraction, one flake at a time.