double-tongued love

Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Making contrary declarations on the same subject at different times; deceitful.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Making contrary declarations on the same subject; deceitful.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective idiomatic Saying one thing to one person and something different to another; double talking; deceitful in speech.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective marked by deliberate deceptiveness especially by pretending one set of feelings and acting under the influence of another

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Even worse, the Inaugural was a "double-tongued" address, for it renounced Lincoln's campaign promise of working toward the "ultimate extinction" of slavery, Douglass said.

    John Stauffer: What Obama Can Learn from Lincoln's Inaugural 2009

  • In the Bible, St Paul says that those who aspire to leadership 'must be serious, not double-tongued, not indulging in much wine, not greedy for money, they must hold fast to the mystery of faith with a clear conscience.

    ANC Today 2007

  • But Hermes was angry because he was double-tongued, and struck him with his staff and changed him into

    Hesiod, Homeric Hymns, and Homerica 2007

  • It's a double-tongued strategy, employed in tandem with the deliberate use of the word "racist" to describe affirmative action programs and other measures to overcome the effects of historical racializing.

    Archive 2007-11-01 2007

  • In the Bible, St Paul says that those who aspire to leadership 'must be serious, not double-tongued, not indulging in much wine, not greedy for money, they must hold fast to the mystery of faith with a clear conscience.

    ANC Today 2007

  • Yet the one shall be dubbed a hero, the other called an admirable fellow, and be contended for by every client, and his double-tongued abilities shall carry him through all the high preferments of the law with reputation and applause.

    Clarissa Harlowe 2006

  • He accounted for their animosity by my defiances: no good family, having such a charming daughter, would care to be defied, instead of courted: he must speak his mind: never was a double-tongued man. —

    Clarissa Harlowe 2006

  • Anyone who studies theology will immediately note that to be called a "double-tongued word wrester" is not to be complimented.

    languagehat.com: DOUBLE-TONGUED WORD WRESTER. 2004

  • So I'll join them here as a new, different word, and say that a double-tongued word wrester is one who finds a home in more than one language and who draws forth words from the zeitgeist like plucking drowning sailors from the sea, or like pulling thorns from the paw of a lion, or like picking blackberries from the brierpatch.

    languagehat.com: DOUBLE-TONGUED WORD WRESTER. 2004

  • To be double-tongued is to speak with a forked tongue, to be a liar and a deceiver, while a word wrester is one who picks and chooses his own interpretation of scripture in order to have it conform to his own lifestyle, rather than modifying his lifestyle according to the standard doctrine of his faith.

    languagehat.com: DOUBLE-TONGUED WORD WRESTER. 2004

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