You've heard the old joke about double negatives versus double affirmatives. But how about "No, totally"? Its structure suggests that you mean to affirm the negative to the strongest possible degree -- in fact, it means the exact opposite.
3 comments:
Tom
said...
Interesting about nay and no; I didn't know that.
I wonder if the 'no, totally' phenomenon isn't related to 'no, really?' meaning,'I can't believe that. Is it really true?'
My dad used to have a joke: "Does a house burn up or burn down?"
I'm fond of the word "moot," which can mean either that something is debatable, or that something has been debated and is now settled. I found out that type of word is called an auto-antonym. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym
3 comments:
Interesting about nay and no; I didn't know that.
I wonder if the 'no, totally' phenomenon isn't related to 'no, really?' meaning,'I can't believe that. Is it really true?'
My dad used to have a joke: "Does a house burn up or burn down?"
I'm fond of the word "moot," which can mean either that something is debatable, or that something has been debated and is now settled. I found out that type of word is called an auto-antonym. See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym
My wife thinks there's a contradiction in there when I say "Yeah... no." The yeah is actually short for "yeah, about that..." the "no" is the answer.
By why does flammable and inflammable mean the same thing?
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