It is trivial that a group $G$ is abelian if and only if every subgroup of $G$ with two generators is abelian (i.e., any two elements commute).
If $G$ is a nilpotent group, every subgroup with two generators must be nilpotent. Is the reciprocal true? More precisely:
Let $G$ be a group and suppose that every subgroup of $G$ generated by two elements is nilpotent (with uniformly bounded class if needed). Is $G$ necessarily nilpotent?
When $G$ is finite the answer is "yes", since any two elements of coprime order commute, so a Sylow $p$-subgroup is normal for each prime divisor $p$ of the group order. When $G$ is infinite, I don't know, but others might. Each element of $G$ is certainly an Engel element, but there are non-nilpotent groups in which every element is an Engel element, (constructed, for example, by P.M. Cohn).