Meaning of double entendre | Babel Free

Definitions

A phrase that has two meanings, especially where one is innocent and literal, the other risqué, bawdy, or ironic; an innuendo.

Equivalents

Examples

“Avoid all equivocal expressions, usually denominated double entendre; they are certain proofs of a mean and indelicate mind.”

“It is a momentous crusade without the cross; and an insidious one, for the calumnies and double entendre against the church are well wrapped up and keenly distributed.”

“Churn and stick, and the agitation needed to make the butter, would obviously suggest sexual intercourse, and so the work song becomes an occasion for a series of double entendres in which the dairy maids could tease the men working in the vicinity and thus enact the courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi to make their work sacred.”

“It is not only the teacher's play with single words, phrases, and double entendre that are common in my classroom data.”

CEFR level