Word.ws English Dictionary

doubling down

doubling down is the present participle and gerund of double down.

Meaning of double down

Verb

double down (third-person singular simple present doubles down or (nonstandard) double downs, present participle doubling down or (nonstandard) double downing, simple past and past participle doubled down or (nonstandard) double downed)

  1. (intransitive) To double one's wager, particularly, the name of a specific doubling bet allowed in blackjack.
    • He'd bet three thousand and double down to six thousand, all of it hanging on the turn of the next card.1999, Frederick Barthelme, Steven Barthelme, Double Down: Reflections on Gambling and Loss, →ISBN, page 66
  2. (broadly, figuratively, intransitive) To significantly increase a risk, investment, or other commitment; to respond to a challenge (e.g. to an opinion) by reinforcing or extending one's position rather than moderating it.
    • Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama all want to get out of Iraq. They all want to double down in Afghanistan.2007 April 12, Peter Beinart, “The Kosovo Conundrum”, in Time

Questions about doubling down

What is doubling down the present participle and gerund of?
Doubling down is the present participle and gerund of double down.

Words near doubling down in the dictionary

  1. doubling back
  2. doubling cube
  3. doubling cubes
  4. doubling dice
  5. doubling die
  6. doubling down
  7. doubling in brass
  8. doubling off
  9. doubling over
  10. doubling time
  11. doubling times

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: doubling down (page history and authors); double down (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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