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View synonyms for double standard

double standard

[ duhb-uhl stan-derd ]

noun

  1. any code or set of principles containing different provisions for one group of people than for another, especially an unwritten code of sexual behavior permitting men more freedom than women. Compare single standard ( def 1 ).
  2. Economics. bimetallism.


double standard

noun

  1. a set of principles that allows greater freedom to one person or group than to another


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Word History and Origins

Origin of double standard1

First recorded in 1950–55

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Idioms and Phrases

A set of principles establishing different provisions for one group than another; also, specifically, allowing men more sexual freedom than women. For example, She complained that her father had a double standard—her brothers were allowed to date, but she was not, even though she was older . [Mid-1900s]

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Example Sentences

We should undo that double standard by offering similar protections to every young Black man who is arrested in this country.

This double standard also seems to be rather flagrantly gender-based—grossly unfair to men and paternalistic toward women.

As long as that double-standard persists, no algorithm can fix its injustice.

Of course, this double standard is hardly only a problem for Jezebel.

The double standard of sexualization is hypocritical at best and ineffectively vindictive at worse.

But any such double standard, in which the two measures are absolutely incommensurable, leads straight to chaos.

Brussels just now is humorously a victim of the double standard—not moral, but financial.

The double standard furnishes many of these humorous interludes.

America is unique in the fact that although we have colonial possessions, we do not have a double standard of morality.

In a word, there is the double standard of morals, not only of priest and laity, but of man and woman.

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Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

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