double life

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English[edit]

WOTD – 26 November 2019

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

double life (plural double lives)

  1. An existence or life that has two aspects, particularly when one of them is regarded as embarrassing, immoral, or unlawful and thus kept hidden from a person's family, friends, and work colleagues.
    Superman lives a double life as a superhero and as the reporter Clark Kent.
    • 1875 February, “Have We Two Brains?”, in The Cornhill Magazine, volume XXXI, number 182, London: Smith, Elder & Co., […], →OCLC, pages 153 and 154:
      [page 153] But perhaps the most remarkable illustration of a double life is one which has been brought before the notice of the scientific world recently; [...] "A sergeant of the French army, F——, twenty-seven years of age, was wounded at the Battle of Bazeilles, by a ball which fractured his left parietal bone. [...] [page 154] Three or four months after the wound was inflicted, periodic disturbances of the functions of the brain made their appearance, and have continued ever since. [...] For four years, therefore, the life of this man has been divided into alternating phases, short abnormal states intervening between long normal states."
    • 1892, Helen Campbell, chapter XXXVIII, in Darkness and Daylight; or, Lights and Shadows of New York Life. […], Hartford, Conn.: A. D. Worthington & Co., publishers, →OCLC, page 695:
      Nearly all great criminals lead double lives. Strange as it may appear, it is a fact that some of the most unscrupulous rascals who ever cracked a safe or turned out a counterfeit were at home model husbands and fathers. [...] I recall one desperate fellow who paid for his two little daughters' education at a convent in Canada, from which they were graduated well-bred and bright young ladies, without ever a suspicion of their father's business reaching them.
    • 1894 January, “The Search Light”, in Harry Wakefield Bates, editor, Godey’s Magazine, volume CXXVIII, number 763, New York, N.Y.: Godey Pub. Co., →OCLC, page 110, column 1:
      A man cannot live a lie and not be detected in it. He may sometimes live for years with a cloak about him, enveloping the dark side of his nature, but sooner or later the mask will be torn away, and the true man revealed. There are those who live double lives, who, like the characters in [Robert Louis] Stevenson's famous English novel [Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)], have the extremes of good and evil in their natures; but, for the sake of human kind in general, let us be thankful they are few and far between.
    • 1905 April 2, Lord Bishop of London [i.e., Arthur Winnington-Ingram], “Sermon at Kensington Palace Church”, in The Bishop of London’s Lenten Mission. A Series of Addresses Delivered in Various London Churches during Lent, 1905. […], London, Brighton, East Sussex: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, […]; New York, N.Y.: E. S. Gorham;  […], published 1906, →OCLC, page 31:
      I have found in other churches some of the most regular Churchpeople who were living double lives. Are there any here who are living double lives, and who have not obeyed and are not obeying the authority of Jesus Christ—who are tampering with His marriage law— [...]
    • 1976, C[harles] P[erry] Stacey, quoting William Lyon Mackenzie King, “Mathilde Grossert”, in A Very Double Life: The Private World of Mackenzie King, Toronto, Ont.: Goodread Biographies, →OCLC; paperback edition, Halifax, Nova Scotia: Formac Publishing Company, 2013, →ISBN, part I (The Boy and the Girls), page 50:
      There is no doubt I lead a very double life. I strive to do right and continually do wrong. Yet I do not do the right I do to make it a cloak for evil. The evil that I do is done unwillingly, it comes of the frailty of my nature, I am sorry for it.
    • 1996, T[homas] F[rancis] O’Higgins, A Double Life, Dublin: Town House, →ISBN, page 184:
      My account, therefore, of involvement in some of the political developments of the following sixteen years or so is the account of a man who led the double life of a barrister and a politician, and who, if he achieved any success in either role, owed it all to having the understanding and constant support of a wonderful wife.
    • 2004 December 10, “‘Jekyll and Hyde’ Rapist Jailed”, in BBC News‎[1], archived from the original on 11 November 2016:
      A respected family man who led a double life as a serial rapist touring the country as a travelling salesman has been jailed for life.
    • 2005 November 7, Edward Guthmann, “’50s idol Tab Hunter had a secret. He’s gay. And he wrote about it.”, in San Francisco Chronicle‎[2], San Francisco, Calif.: Hearst Corporation, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 15 April 2019:
      Like Rock Hudson, who also lived a double life as a gay man and highly desired matinee idol, [Tab] Hunter was constantly in fear of losing his career. "Finding out who I was, sexually, was one thing," he writes. "Admitting it was something else entirely, since any evidence could have destroyed my livelihood (or so I thought)."
    • 2010 June 16, B. Michael Moro, Double Life, Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 363:
      When I wasn't risking my life [as an assassin and double agent] I was calmly relaxing, or playing guitar, or even working at a regular job. The dangerous part of my life kept me from getting bored. I still didn't have a clue of how to stop living a double life. I couldn't tell her about any of it either. [...] If I wasn't living a double life I would probably have married her that weekend.
  2. The hidden, or more unusual, aspect of a person's life.
    She was devastated to find out her husband had been living a double life as a cross-dresser.
    • 2014 November 22, Associated Press, “Client arrested 7 years after mom with secret life disappeared”, in New York Post‎[3], New York, N.Y.: News Corp, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 27 June 2016:
      A single mother who vanished from western Colorado more than seven years ago led a double life as a paid escort with many unsavory clients, investigators say.
    • 2018 March 26, A. A. Dowd, “Steven Spielberg Finds Fun, and maybe even a Soul, in the Pandering Pastiche of Ready Player One”, in The A.V. Club‎[4], archived from the original on 31 May 2018:
      Our window into both worlds—the cluttered “real” one and the expansive virtual-reality alternative—is 18-year-old orphan Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), who lives a double life as a vaguely elven avatar with frosty, malleable hair and a DeLorean constructed from 1s and 0s.
    • 2019 May 24, Sarah Lumley, Phoebe Eckersley, “Woman discovers husband of 64 years had led double life as a spy after his death”, in Daily Mirror‎[5], London: Reach plc, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 1 June 2019:
      A woman only discovered her 'family man' husband had led a secret double life as a spy after his death. Audrey Phillips, 85, was married to Glyn for 64 years but was unaware he had been working for the British Intelligence Force since he was 13.

Usage notes[edit]

  • The term is often preceded by forms of the words lead or live.
  • Where sense 1 is concerned, the term double life and its plural form double lives are often used with the same meaning, the former with the connotation of a single life with two aspects and the latter with the connotation of two parallel lives lived simultaneously.

Translations[edit]

Anagrams[edit]

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