doubleton

9.4

A hand in card games with exactly two cards in one suit

noun
/ˈdʌbəlˌtən/

Jargon

: doblete

He was pleased to find a doubleton in his cards, since it allowed him to control the play in that suit.

Examples

During the game, she revealed that her hand included a doubleton, which gave her an advantage.
In bridge, a hand with a doubleton may indicate a strategy for playing the game more effectively.
Beginning with a five-factor solution, a process of eliminating singleton and doubleton items was conducted.

Academic text (2010)
All unique sequences with one or two members (single/doubletons) were removed using the AWK command in UNIX.

Academic text (2018)
The Chao1 index is also a qualitative measure of alpha diversity which, besides species richness, takes into account the ratio of singletons (n = 1) to doubletons (n = 2), giving more weight to rare species.

Academic text (2018)

How Long

long suit

Jargon

7.2

doubleton

Jargon

9.4

singleton

Jargon

1 8.8

void

5 4.9

Surface Forms

doubleton singular

doubletons plural

Morphology

doubleton = double (semi-transparent) = double + ton

The element 'double' clearly signals 'two', but the formative '-ton' is uncommon and the sense is specialized jargon in card games, so derivation is partly clear but not fully predictable for learners.

Etymology

Doubleton comes from double meaning 'two' plus the ending -ton, seen in words like singleton, which names a holding. So a doubleton is literally a holding of 'two' cards in one suit, which is why bridge players use the word.