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duo

UK/ˈdjuː.əʊ/US/ˈdu.oʊ/
nounC1Common in everyday speech and writing · #6,831 of 15,258mostly written

Other forms: duos

A duo is a pair who perform or work together. A comedy duo, the duo split, a piano duo.

It is used most in entertainment, where the comedy duo is a form of its own with a straight man and a fool. The word is Latin for two and is a doublet of two itself.

Kaloian Santos Cabrera · CC BY-SA 4.0

Definitions of duo

  1. 1nounduoA pair who perform or work together.C1

    “The singing duo released their first album together after meeting at university.”

duo is a pair.

Where it comes from

Latin duo means two; the English two is the inherited form of the same root.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *dwóh₁

  2. Proto-Italic

    *duō

  3. Latin

    duo — two

  4. Italian

    duo

  5. French

    duo

  6. English, today

    duo

From French duo or Italian duo, from Latin duo (“two”), from Proto-Italic duō, from Proto-Indo-European dwóh₁. a doublet of two, which was inherited via Proto-Germanic.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

duo in the wild

  • A piece for two pianists performing together on separate pianos is a "piano duo".

    Duet

  • Daryl Hall & John Oates, commonly known as Hall & Oates, were an American pop rock duo formed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1970.

    Hall & Oates

  • The duo reached the US Top 40 with 29 of their 33 singles charting on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1974 and 1991.

    Hall & Oates

  • The duo was founded in 1988 through the suggestion of songwriter and record producer, Tim DuBois.

    Brooks & Dunn

  • The duo signed to Arista Nashville after their formation.

    Brooks & Dunn

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.