Word.ws English Dictionary

double modals

double modals is the plural of double modal.

Meaning of double modal

Noun

double modal (plural double modals)

  1. A sequence of two modal verbs, such as "might could", an impossible construction in standard English, but one used in some dialects, especially Southern US English.
    • The first instances of double modals date back to the seventeenth century.2019, Irina S. Lebedeva, Svetlana N. Orlova, “Semantics and pragmatics of the double modal ‘might could’”, in Training, Language and Culture, volume 3, number 2, →DOI
    Synonyms:
    stacked modal

Questions about double modals

What is double modals the plural of?
Double modals is the plural of double modal.

Words near double modals in the dictionary

  1. double mini trampoline
  2. double mini trampolines
  3. double mini tramps
  4. double minis
  5. double modal
  6. double modals
  7. double monasteries
  8. double monastery
  9. double monocular O
  10. double monocular Os
  11. double moral

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: double modals (page history and authors); double modal (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.

Last updated:

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