entendre

plural entendres

1. A meaning, especially one that is implied rather than explicitly stated.

   Like Lon Chaney, this mind’s mummy lives—but beneath how many wrappings of multiple entendres?

   1970, Eugene Wildman, Montezuma’s Ball, Chicago, Ill.: The Swallow Press Inc., →LCCN, page 82

   5 more examples

   “Come on baby let’s ride / slide on into your four-wheel-drive and ride,” the singer urges, conveying more entendres than two.

   1986, San Francisco Focus, volume 33, page 105, column 2

   Still, in pursuit of said Phantom Nympho, much fun had been had – and more entendres doubled than you could shake a stick at.

   1992, Julie Burchill, Sex & Sensibility, London: Grafton, →ISBN, page 38

   Though he decries “egghead philosophers who try to tell us what we are,” even [Vince] McMahon notes a historical connection surrounding the evolution of WWF plot lines. In the 1980s, echoing the Cold War, it was mostly a matter of good guys versus bad guys. “Black and white, pretty simple,” he says. “But now we’re into more entendres, different shadings.”

   1999 November–December, Joel Drucker, “King of the Ring: Let the Critics Snipe; Pro Wrestling Honcho Vince McMahon Will Tell You, ‘We’re About What People Want’”, in Cigar Aficionado, volume 7, number 6, archived from the original on 29 Apr 2020, page 135, column 2

   […] and double-, triple-, multiple-entendres of its very title already begin to dramatize, and with the effect of seeming to replicate the very miscarriage of ‘dialectic’ itself that is the crux of the book’s indictment of ‘enlightenment’.

   2009, Steven Helmling, Adorno’s Poetics of Critique (Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy), Bloomsbury Academic, →ISBN

   Ono Komachi was a prominent and gifted poet in her day. She was able to weave emotional intensity, multiple entendres, and metaphors together to form elegant poetry.

   2010, The British Tradition (Prentice Hall Literature), Michigan teacher’s edition, volume 2, Prentice Hall, →ISBN, page 804