Those of us who paid attention in school (at least periodically) will recall that, in English at least, double negatives are a bad thing. They cancel each other out; as a result you often end up saying the opposite of what you mean to say. For example, if one were to say "I didn't say nothing", that might be interpreted as meaning that I did in fact say something.
For your edification, I submit the following question: does the same sort of principle apply to other restrictive declarations? This morning I saw a sign that read:
"Faux imitation leather chairs"
Do "faux" and "imitation" cancel each other out? Is this chair really made with good ol' cowhide? Or does "faux" actually intensify the imitationiness, i.e. this is not even imitation leather, but some crude knock-off of imitation leather?
To really have some fun, let's throw another spanner into the works:
"Genuine faux imitation leather chairs"
And people wonder why machine translation still hasn't become a reality...
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3 comments:
"...double negatives are a bad thing. They cancel each other out..."
Except in movies and popular music:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_negative#English
Ah yes, my young Padawan, but although a mighty force usage is, make for good grammar it does not. In other words, quoting "we don't need no stinkin' badges" from a classic movie like Treasure of the Sierra Madre" doesn't mean that it's good English.
Double negatives have been accepted as more-or-less "proper English" over the years within certain dialects, or to display that the speaker isn't an expert in Received Pronunciation or the Queen's English. That doesn't take away from the thesis of my original post, which was in fact about the genuine fake faux imitation leather... :)
... and was it the Corinthians who made the leather car seats, or didn't they just done got made in Detroit while someone wasn't not reading the book of Corinthians?
Michael Occhipinti (does that mean he likes to drink eight pints of beer every day?) isn't not playing the Spadina Freehouse (free - ya, right!) Thurs., May 3. I went looking for that video of you playing the big saxomaphone and came across this blog.
Now, you know I had to look up Padawan... and I found this, which is pretty cool: http://padawan.info/
Now, if you boys don't stop all this talk about double negatives, I'll have to report you to the Department of Redundancy Department.
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