MEANING
1. Something that can produce both beneficial and harmful effects.
2. A sword whose blade has a sharpened cutting edge along both sides.
Use it for
describing an advantage with a related downside; showing a resource that can help and harm; evaluating the mixed consequences of one feature; distinguishing trade-offs from an unqualified benefitShows how the same feature can offer an advantage while also creating a disadvantage. Writing functions: Mixed consequences.
Words that belong together
- prove a double-edged sword
- be a double-edged sword
On the page
Greater visibility was a double-edged sword: it brought donors but exposed the witnesses.
Automation became a double-edged sword when faster processing made unnoticed errors spread more quickly.
A double-edged sword hung above the doorway, its blade dark with age.
The conservator identified the weapon as a double-edged sword rather than a single-edged saber.
Word forms
- Base
- double-edged sword
Usage notes
Count noun phrase: a double-edged sword/double-edged swords. Keep the hyphen in double-edged. Figurative and literal senses are separate. Register: neutral. Commonness: common (qualitative editorial estimate, informed by dictionaries/corpus).
Practice this word in a sentenceYour margin notes
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