Meaning
A person's remarkably close look-alike or double. The word arrived in English with a ghostly sense - a spirit-double whose appearance was an omen - but has drifted toward a neutral, often light-hearted use for any striking resemblance. Common in celebrity coverage and everyday talk, with the supernatural shading surviving mostly in folklore and horror contexts. Neutral or playful in modern use; the ominous supernatural connotation survives mainly in folklore and horror contexts. Regional use: General English (borrowed from German).
Origin
German Doppel 'double' plus Gänger 'goer, walker', literally 'double-walker'. The novelist Jean Paul coined it in Siebenkäs (1796) - strictly in the form Doppeltgänger, which he glossed as 'people who see themselves' - while the plain form Doppelgänger also appears in the same novel, playing on Gang, a course of food. English printers used it as a German word from 1824 and in English usage by 1826, initially for the 'apparition of a living person'; Merriam-Webster dates first known use to 1851. Its spread owed much to Catherine Crowe's popular 1848 study of the paranormal, The Night-Side of Nature, and English had earlier used the native word 'fetch' for the same apparition.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- doppelgaenger
- doubleganger
Usage Examples
- At the conference a stranger stopped me and insisted I was her colleague's doppelgänger.
- The biopic works largely because the lead actor is a convincing doppelgänger of the former president.
- In the old folklore, meeting your doppelgänger on a lonely road was considered an omen of death.