Webster’s 11th Collegiate Dictionary lists 83 words beginning with “double.” They run all the way from “double agent” (a spy pretending to serve one government while actually serving another) to “double whammy,” limply defined as “a combination of two usually adverse forces, circumstances or effects.” That’s a whammy?

It is remarkable. The English language embraces double-barrel, double bogey, double boiler, double-clutch, double-cross, double date, double-decker, double entry, doubleheader, double jeopardy, double standard and double take. If you ask me why some of the 83 doubles are one word, some two words, some hyphenated, some not hyphenated, I will explain: I have no idea.

The Random House Dictionary is no help in the matter of “double whammy.” Having defined “whammy” properly as “a devastating blow, setback or catastrophe,” the editors could say of “double whammy” only that it is “a combination of two factors producing a potent negative impact.” Yawn. Let it go. I am digressing from my theme before I have a theme. It happens on rainy days.

To the point: Several doubles are of special interest to writers. The most troublesome is probably the Double Possessive, aka the Double Genitive. It goes back to Chaucer’s time, and today it crops up everywhere. “There is a photo of Junior’s on the desk.” The “of” clearly indicates possession, but so does the apostrophe-s. Something seems to be left out. Could it be a photo of Junior’s house, or Junior’s dog?

Eighteenth-century grammarians gave a good deal of thought to the Double Genitive – for example, “a soldier of the king’s.” Why the apostrophe-s? Plainly, “a bone of the dog’s” and “a bone of the dog” are two different things. How is ambiguity to be avoided? One answer is to skip one or the other possessive form. Readers will have little trouble distinguishing “a bone of the dog” from “the dog’s bone.” Similarly, there’s no pitfall in “soldiers of the king” or “the king’s soldiers.”

The Double of Comparative Degree is not much of a troublemaker, but it merits a paragraph. A Confederate general, Nathan Bedford Forrest, put the device to good use in telling his captains how to fight: “Git thar fustest with the mostest.” You will not be surprised to learn that Forrest’s biographers edited the command to read, “Get there first with the most men.” Some biographers have no ear.

On a higher level of exhortation, speaking at the funeral of Caesar, Antony pilloried dear Brutus. His was “the most unkindest cut of all.” Shakespeare loved these things. In “Love’s Labour’s Lost,” we find “more fairer than fair.” In “Hamlet,” “I love thee best. O most best, believe it.” In “The Merchant of Venice,” Shylock praises Portia just before she outwits him: “How much more elder art thou than thy looks!” It is a redundancy that less gifted authors should avoid.

Here is another double to avoid – the Double Modal, as in “The wagon master thought they might could buy cloth in Dodge.” There’s a subtle difference between “might buy” and “could buy,” but we ought to make up our mind, one or the other.

Writers also will want to eschew (what a lovely verb!) the Double Passive, as in President Bill Clinton’s muddied assertion: “There is no evidence that any improper influence was sought to be exercised by me or anybody else.” The writer who falls into such a swamp will want to be dragged out.

Limitations of space forbid an extension of this treatise to such Double Adverbs as “thusly” and “doubtlessly” (instead of the homespun “thus” and “doubtless”). Neither can we get into Double Negatives (I don’t know nothin’) or Doubletalk or Double Entendres. These are not uncongenial topics. Indeed, it might provide double pleasure and double fun to get into them one day soon. I will chew on it.

James Kilpatrick is a syndicated columnist.

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