Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A construction that employs two negatives, especially to express a single negation.
Wiktionary
- n. pejorative, rhetoric A phrase in which there are two negative words or their compounds (e.g. no, not, never, none, etc), occasionally leading to ambiguity in the meaning, but necessary in some foreign languages.
WordNet 3.0
- n. an affirmative constructed from two negatives
- n. a grammatically substandard but emphatic negative
Examples
“The Misses Boggs lost the rest of the sentence, for at the utterance of the double negative Miss Lydia Carew had flashed out, not in a blur, but with mortal haste, as when life goes out at a pistol shot!”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘double negative’.
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a Doppelgänger story
words you'd find in a Doppelgänger story
mistaken identity, fetch, evil twin, delusion, nephele, dead ringer, sosia, supplant, usurp, svengali, dichotomy, dialectic and 19 more...
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dos and don'ts
do tell, do over, do in, do nothing, do up, do not erase, do not disturb, Do Not Go Gentle ..., do-it-yourself, do-good, do one's best, do not enter and 59 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for double negative.
PossibleUnderscore Haha! I like that one! Dec 31, 2009
Telofy From Pushing Daisies episode “Window Dressed to Kill” (Pie names given in italics):
Olive: I’m sorry you never looked at me the same way you look at Chuck.
Ned: I wouldn’t say never.
(Days later:)
Narrator: Confused not by the particulars but by this particular usage Olive read about sentence structure and the use of the double negative. And with passive-aggressive panache, broached the subject with the Pie-Maker.
Ned: Try this one again.
Olive (tasting Pearway to Heaven): I definitely don’t hate it.
Ned: What does that mean?
Olive: Just what I said.
Ned: Means you like it?
Olive: Υou tell me.
Ned: You said it wasn’t less tasty than Kick in the Kumquat, but more unfulfilling than Rock Me Amade-Quince. (Pause.) I don’t like giving funny names to the pies. Does it not seem disrespectful?
Olive: Τhere you go. Υou did it again.
Later in that episode:
Randy: People who have super-powers don’t not wanna use them.
(Cf. negative concord) Dec 30, 2009
seanahan I can't get no satisfaction. Jan 25, 2007
uselessness Don't use no double negatives. Jan 25, 2007