double-decker colloq.
[parasynth. f. double deck + -er1.]
A double-decked ship, etc. a. ‘A ship with two decks above the water-line’.
| 1835 Western Monthly Mag. June 339 The Washington is a splendid double decker, calculated to carry three hundred tons. |
b. ‘A street-car having a second floor and seats on top; a freight- or cattle-car with two floors’ (Cent. Dict.). Also, a double-decked omnibus. orig U.S.
| 1867 Terr. Enterprise (Virginia, Nev.) 19 July 3/1 A 12-mule double-decker prairie schooner. 1878 Design & Work IV. 324/3 [Quoting U.S. newspaper] The car is a double-decker. 1887 Harper's Mag. Sept. 557/2 The street⁓cars are double-deckers, with seats upon the roof as well as within. 1895 Popular Sci. Monthly Apr. 757 The ‘double decker’ or two-story cars. 1908 Westm. Gaz. 22 Apr. 4/2 The car of the future must be a double-decker. 1955 Times 6 May 19/5 Our policy of substituting double-deckers for single-deckers was continued. |
c. In various technical uses: a loaf baked with a smaller upper portion; a woman's dress consisting of two skirts or flounces, one above the other; a miners' cage made in two storeys; a double-decked aeroplane; two beds, one above the other; a bridge or road built on two levels; a multi-layer cake or sandwich; ‘a tenement-house having two families on one floor’ (Cent. Dict. 1889).
| 1877 W. Wright Hist. Big Bonanza 301 Those [sc. cages in the shaft of a silver mine] with two platforms are called ‘double-deckers’. 1899 Dickinson & Prevost Cumbld. Gloss. 88/1 s.v. Curn keak, Double-decker, a pastry cake baked in the oven, having a layer of currants inside it. 1902 Fortn. Rev. June 1008 The English ‘double-decker’ is a fearful and wonderful production that errs on the side of heaviness. 1902 Westm. Gaz. 30 Oct. 3/1 The double-decker costume sketched has each of its flounces bordered with..grey and white squirrel. 1902 Daily Chron. 12 Nov. 8/6 A number of workmen were being brought up out of the mine..in the double decker cage. 1917 C. C. Turner Aircraft of To-day viii. 137 Chanute made 700 glides in his ‘double-decker’ without an accident. 1934 Webster Double-decker [sandwich]. |
d. attrib.
| 1867 [see b]. 1881 Harper's Mag. Jan. 206/1 A good specimen of a ‘double-decker’ engine. 1906 E. Dyson Fact'ry 'Ands xvii. 227 She pays out double-decker 'am 'n' beef bull's-eyes. 1930 Economist 22 Feb. 405/2 The proposal of the Royal Commission for a double-decker rail and road bridge was rendered out of date. 1930 Aberdeen Press & Jrnl. 20 Mar. 7/6 Thirteen people were injured in an alarming double-decker 'bus smash. 1946 Koestler Thieves in Night 144 It is a kind of double-decker sandwich. There is a crusty top layer of apparent arrogance. 1959 Listener 13 Aug. 263/1, I also take a few sandwiches of the double-decker variety, that is three slices of bread and two fillings. 1963 Times 29 Jan. 14/4 The upswing of the past 12 months, unlike the earlier ones, has been a ‘double-decker’ affair. |