doubleness

American  

[duhb-uhl-nis] / ˈdʌb əl nɪs /

noun

1. the quality or condition of being double.

2. deception or dissimulation.

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Etymology

Origin of doubleness

Middle English word dating back to 1325–75; double, -ness

Example Sentences

That last sentence is typical of the book’s attempt to hold on to the statesman’s and city’s doubleness.

From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 10, 2026

The band’s latest album carries the hard-earned knowledge of age and the strange doubleness of feeling both young and old, like “18-year-old software on 50-year-old hardware,” as Anderson puts it.

From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 2, 2025

Ms. Goldberg exposed the "problem of doubleness" that many Jews of Ashkenzai descent face: this tension between the economic privileges of whiteness and the social marginalization of being Jewish.

From Salon • Feb. 7, 2022

Hall is mindful of this doubleness, which he traces back to his very early adolescence in Raleigh, N.C.

From New York Times • Nov. 2, 2021

I plummeted down past the zigzaggers, the students, the experts, through year after year of doubleness and smiles and compromise, into my own past.

From "The Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath