Various meanings of ダブる and its complexities in Japanese (多義詞 例子)

Question

When I checked the JET vocabulary list JLPT lv2 last night, I found a word:

ダブる, my mind would refer this word as 'double' as in English.

However, the JET vocabulary list gives me a 'curious' meaning: to repeat a school year after falling.

After some research, I confirmed it with some dictionaries out there and compared it with what I have heard/read:

ダブる:

1.「二人用」の意。(ホテルなどでベットが1つのみの2人用客室) -> 'double-bed'

2. スポーツ・ゲームの用語 (ダブル (サッカー), 野球やソフトボール、クリケットにおける二塁打のこと, etc) - Game sports such as soccer, baseball, softball, cricket, etc)

3. 服飾用語 (背広・コートなどの洋服の上衣の前合わせのボタンが、縦2列に並んでいる形状またはそのような洋服。English = double-breasted.ワイシャツの袖やズボン（スラックスなど）の裾の部分に外側への折り返しがある（二重になっている）もの。

4.お酒 ウイスキーなどの量の単位で約60ml。シングル=1液量オンスが約30mlで、その二倍。

5.その他

植物の花の八重咲き

コンピュータで、倍精度の浮動小数点数のこと。

Source

Kotobank also gives me no information regarding the 'repeat a school year after failing'

Source

Goo.ne also gave me no clue

Source

alc gave me no clue as well.

Source

So my questions are:

1.Is this meaning of 'repeating a school year after failing' valid or correct?

2.If it's correct/valid, how often or natural is it to use this word 'ダブル'? Since we have a specific japanese word for repeating a school year after falling, i.e.: 留年/留年する, or can we say: ダブル/ダブルする ?

3.Did I miss something? Please help, especially if you're a native Japanese, to confirm this usage.

Thanks for all your answers!

Answer 1

Try looking up ダブル and ダブる separately. The former is a super common loanword that corresponds to English double. The latter is a verb made from ダブル. See the following questions for the rule:

• What are the principles behind turning foreign language words into verbs?(e.g. ググる and サボる)
• Pronunciation Troubles with トラブル and トラブる: Loanwords with both noun and verb ending in ru mora

1. Is this meaning of 'repeating a school year after failing' valid or correct?

It's valid. Goo辞書 defines ダブる as 「落第して同じ学年を二度する。留年する」.

2. If it's correct/valid, how often or natural is it to use this word 'ダブル'?

The word ダブる itself is a very common slang word meaning "to get/have the same thing" (e.g., getting the same item from a loot box) or "to be duplicated". I believe almost all university students in Japan understand the 留年 sense of it, too, but this usage is fairly slangy. (This is exactly why ダブる is not listed on ALC, which is a dictionary mainly targeted at native Japanese speakers who don't use slang to look up something.)

3. Did I miss something?

You need to pay attention whether the final character is ル or る :)

Answer 2

1 - yes, this use of ダブる is valid.

2 - this is a slang version of 留年/留年する so it would be up to the speaker to decide when the situation is casual enough to warrant using it.

3 - be careful when doing dictionary searches, that you search for the proper term. On kotobank, at least, if you search for ダブル, with a katakana ru, you see one entry, but if you search for ダブる with a hiragana ru, you see a different entry, which does in fact mention repeating a grade as one of the possible meanings.

https://kotobank.jp/word/%E3%83%80%E3%83%96%E3%82%8B-321969