Double negatives

Why do double negatives sometimes seem more elegantly precise than a straight forward positive statement?  For example, in the previous post it seemed more emotionally accurate to say it had been a not dissatisfying day, rather than simply saying it was a satisfying day.  There’s shading in there that’s lost when you remove the double negative.

4 thoughts on “Double negatives”

  1. Interesting…never really noticed that before. But as the other poster said, you’re not wrong. Or is that you’re not not wrong?

  2. I think this type of double negative is an example of the rhetorical figure of speech “litotes,” where emotional emphasis is achieved by denying the opposite of something instead of affirming its positive.

    The Oxford English Dictionary has a cool example: ‘When no small tempest lay on us.’ (1855). It looks like the first recorded use of the word “litotes” occured in 1657.

    There’s also some nifty examples at:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litotes

    Nice posts Jonathan :-)

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