Word.ws English Dictionary

double-edged swords

double-edged swords is the plural of double-edged sword.

Meaning of double-edged sword

Noun

double-edged sword (plural double-edged swords)

  1. (figuratively) A benefit that is also a liability, especially a benefit that carries some significant but not-so-obvious cost or risk.
    • He added: “Facebook is a double-edged sword. You don’t want to support it, but you have to use it in order to reach a large audience.”2020 June 23, Tiffany Hsu, “Ad Boycott of Facebook Keeps Growing”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 15 Mar 2021
  2. (figuratively) A neutral principle that has applications that may be either positive (beneficial) or negative (adverse) to one's own interests.
    • The unintended ambiguity of the phrase was a double-edged sword: it spurred litigation but it also ended up shielding good-faith actors.
  3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see double-edged, sword.

Questions about double-edged swords

What is double-edged swords the plural of?
Double-edged swords is the plural of double-edged sword.

Words near double-edged swords in the dictionary

  1. double-dyed
  2. double-eagle
  3. double-eagles
  4. double-edged
  5. double-edged sword
  6. double-edged swords
  7. double-end
  8. double-ended
  9. double-ended dildo
  10. double-ended queue
  11. double-ended queues

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: double-edged swords (page history and authors); double-edged sword (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “double-edged swords.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/double-edged_swords. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.