🪢 A jump rope game 🤪 Nonsense

double Dutch

9.6

Speech or writing that is hard to understand and sounds like nonsense

idiom
/ˈdʌbəl dʌtʃ/

Archaic

: palabrería incomprensible

I couldn't understand a word; it was just double Dutch to me.

Examples

What he said was pure double Dutch!
His explanation of the new policy was just double Dutch to me.
She listened politely, though the technical jargon sounded like double Dutch.
The instructions were double Dutch, and I couldn't follow a word.
The technical manual was filled with double Dutch that confused everyone in the meeting.
When he started explaining his theory, it sounded like complete double Dutch to me.
Listening to her speak about quantum mechanics felt like double Dutch because I couldn't grasp any of it.

Synonyms

gibberish

vsdouble Dutch

45 7.2

Speech or writing that does not make sense

is the idiomatic expression for the same idea in everyday speech

gobbledygook

vsdouble Dutch

Informal

9 9.9

Confusing speech or writing full of technical words that most people cannot understand

is plain nonsense or unintelligibility rather than pompous technical wording

jabberwocky

vsdouble Dutch

Literature

8 9.9

Nonsense language that sounds like real speech but has no clear meaning

is general incomprehensible speech rather than playful poetic nonsense

double talk

vsdouble Dutch

6 9.0

Confusing speech that hides the truth, often to avoid a direct answer

is simply impossible to understand rather than intentionally deceptive language

gobbledegook

vsdouble Dutch

Informal

1 9.8

Language that is hard to understand because it uses many difficult words or nonsense

is general nonsense or gibberish, not specifically jargon driven

all double Dutch

vsdouble Dutch

Informal

9.9

Language you cannot understand at all

is the shorter common idiom for that same complete incomprehensibility

Antonyms

sense

∞ 4.1

A particular meaning of a word or expression

clarity

152 3.0

How easy it is to understand what someone says or writes

How Understandable

easy to understand

27 1.0

jargon

43 7.2

double Dutch

Archaic

9.6

Surface Forms

double Dutch singular

double Dutches plural

Morphology

double + Dutch

Knowing 'double' (twofold) and 'Dutch' (relating to the Netherlands) does not let a learner infer a jump-rope game: there is no transparent compositional link from 'two' + 'Dutch' to two long turning ropes and jumping. The phrase is historically specific and also used idiomatically to mean 'incomprehensible', so its sense is lexicalized and unpredictable from the parts for a B1 learner.

Etymology

Double Dutch may come from a time when English speakers heard Dutch people talking and found the sounds hard to follow. People used double and Dutch as a vivid image for speech that made no sense, so the phrase now means 'nonsense'.