double Dutch
3
6.9
- noun
- /ˈdʌbəl dʌtʃ/
:
doble salto
- During the summer camp, we learned how to play double Dutch and practiced our jumps every day.
- double Dutch jump
- playing double Dutch
- double Dutch competition
Examples
-
double-dutch
Fiction book (1994) -
The neighborhood girls taught us how to play double Dutch while singing fun rhymes together.
-
Yeah, and we was teaching them how to play double dutch.
-
This is my variation of double-dutch.
-
On the screen, the little black girls from Newark were jumping double-dutch.
Fiction book (1994) -
She watched a gaggle of little black girls performing fast-footed double-dutch tricks on top of a carpet of shattered glass in the parking lot across the street.
Fiction book (1996) -
At recess, the children eagerly gathered to play double Dutch, trying to jump in sync with the rotating ropes.
Synonyms
2
1.3
A game or exercise in which people jump while a rope swings under their feet
Surface Forms
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 is the name of a playground jump-rope game that uses two long ropes turned in opposite directions. The word double points to the 'two ropes' and Dutch likely names the style or people who brought the game, so double Dutch means that 'jump rope game'.