Word.ws English Dictionary

double-header

double-header noun: a pair of games played one after another between the same teams.

Noun

double-header (plural double-headers)

  1. A pair of games played one after another between the same teams.
    • This afternoon we will have a double-header between the Bears and the Wolves, games at 3pm and 7:30pm.
    • The ′40s and ′50s were in advance of the day of the twilight double-header, and most certainly before the more common twilight or “twinight” double-headers, in which the fans must leave so as to empty their seats for a new crowd which is to see the second game at a separately scheduled time.2011, William B. Gould, IV, Bargaining with Baseball: Labor Relations in an Age of Prosperous Turmoil, page 43
  2. A pair of sporting events, one after the other, at a single venue.
    • The NRL season opener at the Olympic stadium will be a double-header: Dragons vs Eels and Souths vs Wests.
    • The next jazz double-header at The Sound Lounge will feature the Leonie Cohen Trio and the Sam Hawkins Quartet
  3. A pair of sporting events, one after the other, broadcast on the same television channel.
  4. The catching of a single fish simultaneously by two fishermen when fishing together.
  5. A double-headed coin.
  6. A train pulled by two locomotives.
    • If this pipe is broken while running as the second engine of a double-header nothing will be lost as the operation of the distributing valve is then similar to that of a triple valve,[…].1929, Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen′s Magazine, volumes 86-87, page 132
  7. (slang) Double penetration
    • According to feminist writer and adult film producer Tristan Taormino, similar instances of sexual contact between men in heterosexual pornography, such as the "double header," circumvent queer meaning, given their location within heterosexual sex.2015, Jane Ward, Not Gay, New York University Press, →ISBN, page 104

Forms of double-header

pluraldouble-headers
alternative formdouble header
alternative formdoubleheader

Questions about double-header

What does double-header mean?
Double-header means a pair of games played one after another between the same teams.
What part of speech is double-header?
Double-header is a noun.
What is the plural of double-header?
The plural of double-header is double-headers.

Words near double-header in the dictionary

  1. double-hatted
  2. double-hatting
  3. double-head
  4. double-headed
  5. double-headed bug
  6. double-header
  7. double-headers
  8. double-heading
  9. double-heads
  10. double-hearted
  11. double-hulled

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: double-header (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-double-header.wav.

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