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Doppelganger

Definition: Doppelganger

Doppelganger

Noun

1. A ghostly double of a living person that haunts its living counterpart.

Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
 


Modern Usage: Doppelganger

DomainUsage

Movie/TV Titles

Doppelganger (1969)

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Specialty Definition: Doppelganger

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Dictionary.reference.com provides the following definition for doppelganger: doppelganger \\DOPP-ul-gang-er\\, noun: A spiritual or ghostly double or counterpart; esp., an apparitional double of a living person; a cowalker.
     To readers of science fiction, the idea of a single atom existing
     simultaneously in two states or places is reminiscent of the
     supernatural "doppelganger" -- a flesh-and-blood duplicate of one's
     self encountered while walking along a street. 
     "Physicists Put Atom in Two Places at Once," New York Times, May 28, 1996

But my primary interest here is not the machinations of science itself but the fascinating life and times of its dark doppelganger, the mad scientist, in all his overreaching glory. David J. Skal, Screams of Reason: Mad Science and Modern Culture

Doppelganger is from the German: doppel, double + Gänger, goer. The correct pronunciation can be heard by viewing the following web reference:
      http://dictionary.reference.com/help/ahd4/pronkey.html.
dop·pel·gäng·er or dop·pel·gang·er((dpl-gngr-gng-) n.
      A ghostly double of a living person, especially one that haunts
      its fleshly counterpart.
[German, a double : doppel, double (from French double. See double) + Gänger, goer (from Gang, a going, from Middle High German ganc, from Old High German).]

Doppelgängers also appear in some role-playing games and are a type of shapeshifter that mimics the creature that it is shadowing.

Doppelgänger is also the title of a 1983 album by rock band Daniel Amos, released on Alarma! Records.

Doppelganger was a much more darker, haunting album than the album that preceded it, Alarma. The album starts with the eerie backward sounds of "Hollow Man" (inspired by T. S. Eliot's poem, The Hollow Men). Taylor's lyrics to "I Didn't Build it For Me" and "New Car" were sharp attacks on televangelists, that actually predate the Jimmy Swaggart/Jim Bakker/Robert Tilton scandals by nearly a decade.

Doppelganger was the second of a four part series of albums by DA entitled The Alarma! Chronicles, which also included the albums Alarma, Vox Humana, and Fearful Symmetry. The band raised eyebrows on the tour that followed each release, by presenting a full miltimedia event complete with video screens sychronized to the music, something that was unusual in the early 1980s for any band.

In 1983, DA was Terry Scott Taylor on rhythm guitars and lead vocals, Jerry Chamberlain on lead guitars and vocals, Tim Chandler on bass guitar, and Ed McTaggart on drums.

Side One:

  1. "Hollow Man" (Taylor)
  2. "Mall (All Over The World)" (Taylor)
  3. "Real Girls" (Taylor/Chamberlain)
  4. "New Car!" (Taylor)
  5. "Do Big Boys Cry" (Taylor)
  6. "Youth With A Machine" (Taylor)
  7. "The Double" (Taylor)
  8. "Distance and Direction" (Taylor)

Side Two:
  1. "Memory Lane" (Taylor)
  2. "Angels Tuck You In" (Taylor)
  3. "Little Crosses" (Chamberlain)
  4. "Autographs for the Sick" (Words by Taylor, Music by Taylor/Chamberlain/Chandler)
  5. "I Didn't Build It For Me" (Words by Taylor, Music by Taylor/Chamberlain)
  6. "Here I Am" (Taylor)
  7. "Hollow Man (Reprise)" (Taylor)

Doppelgänger aka Journey to the Far Side of the Sun is also a science fiction movie produced by Gerry Anderson.

Full details to follow

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Doppelganger."

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Commercial Usage: Doppelganger

DomainTitle

Books

  

Theater & Movies

  

Music

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Usage Frequency: Doppelganger

"Doppelganger" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 90.00% of the time. "Doppelganger" is used about 10 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)
Parts of SpeechPercentUsage per
100 Million Words
Rank in English
Noun (singular)90%9117,287
Lexical Verb (base form)10%1339,140
                    Total100.00%10N/A

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

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Frequency of Internet Keywords: Doppelganger

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.
 
ExpressionFrequency
per Day

doppelganger

127

definition doppelganger

71

definition doppelganger whats

57

doppelganger man spider

4

doppelganger literature

3
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Modern Translation: Doppelganger

Language Translations for "doppelganger"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.

Japanese Kanji 

  

二重身 . (various references)

   

Japanese Katakana 

  

にじゅうし". (various references)

   

Pig Latin

  

oppelgangerday

   

Turkish

  

tıpkısının aynısı, tıpatıp aynısı. (various references)

Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

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Derivations & Misspellings: Doppelganger

Derivations

Words beginning with "doppelganger": doppelgangers. (additional references)


Misspellings

"Doppelganger" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: dopelganger, dopleganger, doppleganger, dopplganger. (additional references)

Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references).

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Anagrams: Doppelganger

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams

Words within the letters "a-d-e-e-g-g-l-n-o-p-p-r"

-3 letters: dognapper.

-4 letters: anglepod, doggerel, dognaper, endpaper, engorged, enlarged, goldener, grappled, lappered, loppered, oleander, peroneal, pledgeor, rappeled, reloaned, renegado.

-5 letters: aerogel, agelong, angeled, angered, aproned, dangler, deplane, deplore, derange, doggrel, draggle, engaged, engager, engorge, enlarge, enraged, erelong, galoped, gangrel, gargled, general, gleaned, gleaner, glopped, gnarled, goldarn, grandee, grapnel, grapple, grenade, groaned, ladrone, lagered, learned.

 Words containing the letters "a-d-e-e-g-g-l-n-o-p-p-r"
 

+1 letter: doppelgangers.

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.

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Alternative Orthography: Doppelganger


Hexadecimal (or equivalents, 770AD-1900s) (references)

44 6F 70 70 65 6C 67 61 6E 67 65 72

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519; backwards) (references)

American Sign Language (origins from 1620-1817 in Italy and, especially, France) (references)

=

Semaphore (1791, in France) (references)

Braille (1829, in France) (references)

Morse Code (1836) (references)

-..    ---    .--.    .--.    .    .-..    --.    .-    -.    --.    .    .-.

Dancing Men (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903) (references)

Binary Code (1918-1938, probably earlier) (references)

01000100 01101111 01110000 01110000 01100101 01101100 01100111 01100001 01101110 01100111 01100101 01110010

HTML Code (1990) (references)

&#68 &#111 &#112 &#112 &#101 &#108 &#103 &#97 &#110 &#103 &#101 &#114

ISO 10646 (1991-1993) (references)

0044 006F 0070 0070 0065 006C 0067 0061 006E 0067 0065 0072

British Sign Language (Fingerspelling, BSL; 1992, British Deaf Association Dictionary of British Sign Language) (references)

Encryption (beginner's substitution cypher): (references)

388182827178736780737184

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INDEX

1. Definition
2. Usage: Modern
3. Usage: Commercial
4. Usage Frequency
5. Expressions: Internet
6. Translations: Modern
7. Derivations
8. Anagrams
9. Orthography
10. Bibliography


  

Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.