Home › Glossary › Letter D

Doppelganger

Supernatural
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A mysterious double of a living person, often regarded as an omen. It commonly represents divided identity or approaching death.

Detailed Definition
A doppelganger is an uncanny double who resembles a living person but exists separately from them. In poetry, meeting a double can dramatize conflict between public self and hidden self, past self and present self, or desire and conscience. Because folklore often treats the encounter as a warning of death or disaster, the doppelganger can bring menace to mirror imagery, shadows, portraits, and reflections that seem to act independently.
Example
Example in poetry:
A doppelganger can confront the speaker in a mirror: “My doppelganger lifted her hand a moment after mine.”; Edgar Allan Poe’s tale “William Wilson” offers a literary model for a double who represents conscience and self-conflict.; In a poem about migration, a doppelganger may be the life the speaker might have lived had they never left home.; A poet can use the double structurally by alternating stanzas between “I” and an identical voice that challenges every claim.
Additional Notes
The doppelganger externalizes a divided self. Meeting one’s double may suggest hidden desire, moral conflict, madness, or an ominous confrontation with mortality.
Other Meanings of “Doppelganger”
Also Known As
Doppelgänger Doppelgaenger Double
Skip to main content