Doblar
 

This is a discussion thread for the Daily Spanish Word for March 7, 2009

doblar - verb - to fold, bend, bend over. Look up doblar in the dictionary

Doblé todas mis camisas y las guardé.
I folded all my shirts and put them away.

Besides folding, 'doblar' also means turning, when walking/driving for example:

doblar a la derecha/izquierda: turn to the right/left

Doblar also means twice as much:

Mi edad dobla la tuya: I'm twice as old as you are (My age is twice yours)

I have a question about the example sentence. how do you know when to use a in front of todo?

When the translation is 'to all'.

I remember seeing a sentence like va a doler a todos or something. why isn't it just va a doler todos?

'A todos' is a prepositional phrase.

Gracias a todos. = Thanks to all (to everyone).

That phrase is a shortened form of a longer phrase:
Les doy las gracias a todos. = I give thanks to all (to everyone).

In the last phrase, and the one that follows, you can see that the prepositional phrase is used to clarify the ambiguous indirect object pronoun les:
Un rasguño les va a doler a todos. = A scrape will hurt everyone.

I suppose I need to resurrect this somewhat old thread. LOL!!

Hoy estaba conduciendo por cerca de 7 horas. Estaba escuchando podcasts sobre el aprendizaje de español. En uno de estos, un hablante de españa fue dando instrucciones a una estación de autobuses. Yo he aprendido que "turn" está "doblar". Pero el hablante usó "girar" y "doblar" y "tomar". Lo entiendo el uso de "tomar": "Toma la segunda derecha." Pero, ¿qué es la diferencia del uso de "girar" y "doblar"? ¿Es una diferencia regional?

Doblar also means to turn, to gyrate, ta take (a right or left) :)

Yes, so why was this Spaniard using "girar" in its place?

@Lou Ann: they are synonyms. "Girar", "doblar", "dar (la) vuelta"...