doubleness

English

Etymology

From Middle English doublenesse; equivalent to double +‎ -ness.

Noun

doubleness (usually uncountable, plural doublenesses)

1. The state of being double or doubled.
   • 1540, Great Bible, 1 Chronicles 12 [verse 33],^[1]

     And of Zabulon that went out to the battayle and proceded forth to the war, with all maner of instrumentes of war fyftie M. that were prepared to the war, without any doublenesse of herte.

   • c. 1603–1604 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Measure for Measure”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]:

     If you think well to carry this as you may, the doubleness of the benefit defends the deceit from reproof.

   • 1854, Henry David Thoreau, “Solitude”, in Walden‎^[2], Boston: Ticknor and Fields, page 146:

     I only know myself as a human entity; the scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another. However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it;

   • 1983, Cynthia Ozick, The Cannibal Galaxy‎^[3], New York: Knopf, page 17:

     It was easy for him, when he saw the straight march of his school, the old section taller and wider and brighter than the new wing, and the new wing following in its narrow dark doubleness, to think of boxcars.

2. Behaviour intended to deceive people.

   Synonyms: double-dealing, duplicity, insincerity

   • 1577, William Harrison, “[An Historicall Description of the Islande of Britayne, [….] 14.]”, in The Firste Volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande […], volume I, London: […] [Henry Bynneman] for Iohn Harrison, →OCLC, folio 39, recto, column 1:

     But if it be a vice to coulour craftinesse, subtile practises, doublenesse and hollow behauiour, with a cloke of pollicie, amitie and wisedome, then are Comineus and his companie to be reputed vicious.

   • 1860, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], “Charity in Full-dress”, in The Mill on the Floss […], volume III, Edinburgh, London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book VI (The Great Temptation), page 141:

     It is clear to you, I hope, that Stephen was not a hypocrite—capable of deliberate doubleness for a selfish end; […]

   • 1963, Sylvia Plath, chapter 8, in The Bell Jar‎^[4], New York: Bantam, published 1972, page 79:

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

Synonyms

• (state of being double): See also Thesaurus:twoness

References

• “doubleness”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.