Today, in language use I haven't noticed for far too long...

[deird1]

Does everyone in non-Australia seriously call them twin beds?

Twin? Really?

Single/double works so well. Twin/double is more... aren't they the same? It sounds weird.

I'm rather confused.

Comments

[beroli]

I think the idea is that they assume you're getting bed(s) for two people, so if you're getting one "twin" bed, you're getting two, thus twins. (Or at least, they'd rather sell you two than one.)

[petzipellepingo]

A bed that can fit one person is called a twin and people used to buy two of them for two siblings (twin or otherwise), a bed that could fit two people (this is years ago mind you) is called a double bed. There were no queen or king beds when all of this naming started.

[curiouswombat]

We currently have two, identical, single beds in our two, smallish, spare bedrooms. We hope to move house and will then put them side by side in one room as a spare bedroom - and at that point I will probably tell people that our spare bedroom has twin beds...

[velvetwhip]

I am so used to calling them twin beds... possibly because my sister and I had them and there were two of them and it made sense to me until you called it into question.


Gabrielle

[jesuswasbatman]

Speaking as a UK person, I refer to the items of furniture as "single beds". "Twin beds" is a phrase, used mostly in a hotel context, to refer to two separate single beds in the same room.

[immer_am_lesen]

Odd. 'Single' makes much more sense, to me.

Single person = single bed. (though Double bed isn't *really* for two people, unless you really like cuddling all the time...)

Calling them 'twin' beds makes sense if you have two and are putting them side-by-side, as my parents do, so each has a mattress-hardness to suit personal needs. Otherwise, single all the way. :)

Laney says, "...whaaa?"

[(Anonymous)]

Seriously?
If I go and buy ONE bed for ONE person, that bed's called a TWIN?
Surely twin beds implies that there have to be two beds present?
I have three boys. It'd be ludicrous to call any one of them a twin unless they had arrived in a pair - no pair, not a twin. Isn't that what 'twin' MEANS?