Consider the example of the two-way table.
The column of the table tells us whether the student is a girl or a boy.
The row of the table tells us whether the student's favorite color is pink, red, or green.
Each cell tells us the number of students.
For example,
The 10 is in the boy's column and the favorite color is pink row.
This tells us that there are 10 boys whose favorite color is pink.
There are two variables favorite color and gender.
This is where the two in the two-way frequency table come from.
This is the two-way table.