all double Dutch
- idiom
- Informal
:
palabrería incomprensible
- I tried to read the instructions, but it was all double Dutch to me.
Examples
-
The foreign movie had no subtitles, so the dialogue was all double Dutch for most viewers.
-
Whenever my accountant talks about taxes, it sounds like all double Dutch.
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His explanation was all double Dutch to me.
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When she spoke about quantum physics, it sounded like all double Dutch.
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I tried to read the instructions, but it was all double Dutch to me.
-
The foreign movie had no subtitles, so the dialogue was all double Dutch for most viewers.
-
Whenever my accountant talks about taxes, it sounds like all double Dutch.
Synonyms
45
7.2
Speech or writing that does not make sense
6
9.0
Confusing speech that hides the truth, often to avoid a direct answer
1
9.8
Language that is hard to understand because it uses many difficult words or nonsense
1
9.9
Language that uses many informal words people outside a group may not understand
Speech or writing that is hard to understand and sounds like nonsense
Antonyms
How Understandable
Surface Forms
Morphology
all + double + Dutch
Knowing 'all', 'double' (twofold) and 'Dutch' (relating to the Netherlands) does not let a B1 learner infer the idiomatic sense 'incomprehensible speech'—the literal reading 'twofold Dutch' gives no clue to 'gibberish'. 'Double Dutch' is an established idiom with historical/idiomatic meaning rather than a compositional one, so its meaning is unpredictable from the parts.
Etymology
All double Dutch may come from older English speakers who used 'Dutch' to mean something foreign or strange. One popular story asks you to imagine words like two ropes crossing, with double and Dutch tangled together so the talk feels 'impossible to understand', which is why the phrase means that today.