Double cross

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For other uses, see Double cross (disambiguation).

Double cross is a phrase meaning to betray.

[edit] Origin

The phrase originates from the use of the word cross in the sense of foul play; deliberate collusion to lose a contest of some kind. In his book, A Man Called Intrepid, William Stevenson claims that the term originated with the Double Cross System, a British military counter-intelligence operation during World War II. Apparently, the committee that ran the operation, which aimed to turn known German agents into sources of disinformation, met regularly in room 20 at headquarters. The number on the door to the room was written in Roman numerals, hence XX. Stevenson writes that the committee members began calling themselves "Room 20," and finally, the "double cross" operation.

It has also been suggested that the term was inspired by the practice of 18th-century British thief taker and criminal Jonathan Wild, who kept a ledger of his transactions and is said to have placed two crosses by the names of persons who had cheated him in some way. This folk etymology is almost certainly incorrect, but there is documentary evidence that the term did exist in the 19th century.

More recently, the phrase was used to refer to either of two possible situations:

A competitor participating in the fix who has agreed to throw their game instead competes as usual, against the original intention of their collaborators - one "cross" against another.
Two opposing parties are approached, urging them to throw the game and back the other. Both parties lose out, and the perpetrators benefit by backing a third, winning party.

This use has passed into common parlance, so that, for example, in World War II, British Military Intelligence used the Double Cross System to release captured Nazis back to Germany bearing false information.

(To 'cross swords' was a term for a dual where two drawn swords made an X. So to cross someone was to take a sparring position against them.)

In Charlie Chaplin's film The Great Dictator, the "double cross" is a surrogate for the Nazi swastika of the fictional dictatorship "Tomania" in an unflattering parody of the Third Reich, its ideology and its leadership.