You can use double entendres as literary devices to make a narrative humorous and delightful. They can form riddles or infuse humor into your story. People also use double entendres as a figure of speech to make innuendos. And in this article, we explore the use of double entendres, what they comprise and famous examples in fiction and pop culture.

What Are Double Entendres?

A double entendre exploits the multiple meaning of a word or phrase to provide an expression with double meaning, one being obvious and the other subtle. According to the Oxford Dictionary, the phrase comes from a rare and obsolete identical French expression, which literally meant "double meaning." 

Using it demands a clever and skillfully crafted oratory. Its success depends on the perfect planning and delivery of the precise language at just the right time. Many double entendres are very subtle, so much so that only a few characters and members of the audience may grasp its double meaning. 

Examples of Double Entendres

Shakespeare's works have a ton of double entendres. Even the title of his play Much Ado About Nothing plays on the double meaning of nothing; the second meaning refers to the Elizabethan use of "no-thing" as slang for vagina. In Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio, telling the time to the nurse, said: "‘Tis no less, I tell you; for the bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon." Here, prick means a small mark and a penis.

In music, double entendres are common in the lyrics of many pop songs. A good example is the song title "If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me" by The Bellamy Brothers. Here, David Bellamy exploited the double meaning of the phrase, hold it against me. Literally, it means to press something tight against someone, and idiomatically, it means feeling angry with someone for something they have done.

Witty rap lyrics also contain lots of double entendres. Here is a line by Rock n' Roll Hall of Famer Jay Z: "When I return like Jordan, wearing a four-five, it's not to play games with you. It's to aim at you, probably maim you." Here Jay Z refers to Basketball Player Michael Jordan, who left the NBA and later returned. His jersey carries the number 45, and he is known for his slam dunk shots. But .45 is also an automatic colt pistol, a type of handgun. 

Devices Used in Double Entendres

Double entendres often employ other rhetorical devices, like puns, innuendos, and euphemisms. 

A pun involves exploiting similar-sounding words, words with similar spelling, or both for humorous effects. When used to create double entendres, a pun creates a double meaning. But usually, puns only convey a single connotation. For example, "give peas a chance" plays on the homophones peas and peace to send the message that people should eat peas even though they may appear gross. But in Oliver Twist, when other characters call Charles Bates Master Bates (masturbates), that's a pun used as a double entendre because the homophones have two intended meanings.

Innuendo uses a word or phrase to subtly suggest something inappropriate or sexual. We can see this in the popular jokes that make use of the expression "that's what she said," or "is that what we are calling it now." A good example is in The World Is Not Enough, where James Bond said to Christmas Jones after they had sex, "I thought Christmas only comes once a year." Here we see a pun and innuendo in use simultaneously.

A euphemism is a word or phrase that expresses mildly something that would otherwise be blunt, harsh, or embarrassing. A good example is the phrases "pass away" and "kick the bucket" used to replace the word "died," which sounds harsh. Here is an example of a euphemism as a double entendre: "There music is number two on the charts because the band is an enormous pile of number twos." Here, the second use of "number two" also refers to what children say when they want to take a dump.