Questions tagged [negation]
Negation is the process that turns an affirmative statement (e.g. "I am American") into its opposite denial (e.g. "I am not American").
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Why is “cannot” spelled as one word?
Why is “cannot” spelled as one word whereas other similar constructions such as “do not,” “will not,” “shall not,” “may not” and “must not” are spelled as two words (unless they are contracted as “don’...
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"Whether or not" vs. "whether"
This will depend on whether he's suitable for the job.
This will depend on whether he's suitable for the job or not.
This will depend on whether or not he's suitable for the job.
It is ...
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What's the negation of "I used to be"? Surely not "I didn't used to be"?
What is the negative form of "I used to be"? I often hear "I didn't used to be" but that sounds awfully wrong in my ears.
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"It really doesn't matter" v "It doesn't really matter"
I can't distinguish the difference in meaning between these two sentences.
It really doesn't matter.
It doesn't really matter.
It seems that there is a nuanced difference, but I cannot see what ...
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Why use "need not" instead of "do not need to"?
The header of psyco.sourceforge.net states:
High-level languages need not be slower than low-level ones.
Why use need not instead of do not need? What does it mean? Also, why no to before be?
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"There are no comments" vs. "There is no comment"
Which is correct?
There are no comments.
There is no comment.
Which would you use for a web application, i.e. what to display when a blog post or an article has no comment attached?
Actually, ...
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Order of "not" with infinitive
This is one thing that keeps bugging me, and maybe there's a direct answer.
Grammatically, which one is more correct of these two? Does it make a difference?
I tried not to do that.
I tried to not ...
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How to answer a negative question without ambiguity?
I faced a problem to answer a negative question, for example, when someone asks you:
Don't you have any money?
It's a yes/no question but how should one answer the question without ambiguity?
...
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Please, don't - I'm not
“Please, don't mock me.”
“Oh, no, I don't! I’m not! I'm completely serious about that.”
This is a correction I received from a proofreader of my story.
How does that work? What happens here so ...
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What is the correct way to use "neither" and "nor" in a sentence together?
Given these facts:
The tool cannot be found in the kitchen.
The tool cannot be found in the bathroom.
Which is the correct sentence to represent the situation above?
I can find the tool ...
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"It isn't" vs. "it's not"
Is one stronger than the other? More correct? Just curious, one of the many abstract things to pop into my head on the drive home today...
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Is the use of a hyphen between "non" and an adjective strictly necessary?
Do I need to put a "-" between "non" and an adjective? As an example in physics we say "a non isolated photon", "non tight photon"... The context is very formal (paper publications and similar). Is ...
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When to use "cannot" versus "can't"?
When is it best to write "can't" versus writing "cannot"? Are they interchangeable in every situation?
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Answering the question: Do you mind if...?
The following always puzzles me as a non-native speaker.
When somebody asks the question "Do you mind if...", there seem to be two possible responses.
"Sure" and "No, not at all", which both mean ...
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Are "disgraceful" and "ungraceful" two different kinds of negations?
"Disgraceful" and "ungraceful" are both derived from negations of "graceful".
Wiktionary describes disgraceful as
bringing or warranting disgrace; shameful.
giving offense to moral sensibilities and ...
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Should I use 'or' or 'nor' after a negative statement?
This document does not cover the SDK interfaces nor any other reference material.
I think the above is correct, but my grammatical checker in Microsoft Word underlines nor and suggests or. Why?
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"Don't let's fight"
I was watching a movie the other day and one character said to another, "Don't let's fight" instead of "Let's not fight." Is this proper usage, and if so, what is the grammatical rule that applies ...
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"Can hardly wait" versus "can't hardly wait"
This has been bothering me for a while and I'm finally at a forum where I feel like I might get an answer. I have heard people say "I can hardly wait for summer to get here" and I've also heard "I can'...
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Using "non-" to prefix a two-word phrase
Does "non-" prefixed to a two word phrase permit another hyphen before the second word?
If I want to refer to an entity which is defined as the negation of another entity by attaching "non-" it seems ...
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What is it called when "I don't like X" is used to mean "I positively *dislike* X", or "We do not recommend Xing" is used for "We *discourage* Xing"?
I’m wondering if there’s a term that linguists or rhetoricians use for this (semantic?) phenomenon.
In both cases, it seems as though ‘not’ no longer expresses the mere absence or negation of what it ...
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What is a good replacement for "ununderstandable"?
I want to tell a colleague of mine I'm doing something that will prevent her from getting "ununderstandable" errors. I have:
...so that you will not get unnecessary, [ununderstandable] errors.
...
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The grammaticality of "that don't impress me much"
I'd like to know how the sentence "That don't impress me much" sounds to a native English speaker.
The phrase is the title of a song by Shania Twain, and to my eyes it contains a clear error. It is ...
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Why is "at least" unnatural here? "It won't take at least 15 minutes to walk there."
(1) It won't take at least 15 minutes to walk there.
(2) It won't take more than 15 minutes to walk there.
Am I right in thinking (2) sounds natural but (1) doesn't?
If so, what is the reason for ...
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What is this "Nor"?
And I saw Tityos, son of glorious Gaea, lying on the ground. Over nine roods he stretched, and two vultures sat, one on either side, and tore his liver, plunging their beaks into his bowels, nor could ...
user41481
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The construction of "Known but to God"
The Tomb of the Unknown Solider has the engraving "KNOWN BUT TO GOD", as presumably no man knows his name, but shouldn't it read "unknown, but to God", as the default for everyone is "unknown", with ...
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"All is not lost" vs "Not all is lost"
I guess I've been in mathematics for far too long, and I tend to use the phrase "Not all is lost" as the negative of "All is lost".
To me the phrase "All is not lost" suggests that nothing is lost. ...
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"currently not" or "not currently"
What's the correct order:
Lessons are not currently being offered.
or
Lessons are currently not being offered.
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Is there an acceptable corresponding negative to "well off"?
When we wish to refer to people who are living an affluent lifestyle or simply enjoying favorable circumstances in any particular area, we often say they are well off.
So far so good.
But listening to ...
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Can there be a hyphen in "nonlinear"?
As the title says, I'm wondering if "non-linear" is an acceptable spelling of the word "nonlinear."
A bit of research on this site turns up Is the use of a hyphen between "non" and an ...
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Is my worst enemy my best friend (interpreting negative adjectives applied to negative nouns)? [closed]
"The worst student" is the student who is bad at things. In this case, "worst" simply describes the noun.
Following this logic, your "worst enemy" would be the person who is very bad at being your ...
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Isn't the word "uninstall" wrong?
I've never understood this. Why is the proper usage "uninstall"? You can't actually "unin" something at all and this isn't that case with most (all?) other use cases. Examples:
You make someone sane, ...
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What does 'infinitesimally small' mean?
If infinite is the opposite of infinitesimal, and small is the opposite of large, then:
infinitely large ---------- Means "very large"
infinitely small --------- Means "very small"
infinitesimally ...
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What is the opposite of "enroll"?
Deenroll? Unenroll? I understand words like cancel and resign would work, but is there an appropriate antonym with "enroll" in it?
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Difference between "I haven't" and "I've not" etc
If I have three consecutive words where each adjacent pair can be contracted, e.g. "I would have" or "You are not", is there a difference between the two possible contractions, e.g. "I would've" or "...
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English questions and negation with *do* in syntax
A former lecturer of mine once explained why, from a syntactic point of view, the English rule that negation and questions are formed with the auxiliary do follows from other syntactic facts about ...
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Non-existing or nonexisting [closed]
What is correct in English, non-existing or nonexisting?
Searching sources on Google doesn't help much as both variants are widely present there.
Onelook Dictionary Search doesn't show much about ...
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Why does "Why doesn't it work?" become "Why does it not work?"
When you uncontract doesn't in "Why doesn't it work?" the not moves to "Why does it not work?"
This confuses me even more when I use a longer phrase instead of the pronoun it like below:
Why doesn'...
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What is the difference between "The army didn't have any" and "didn't have no" in "It makes a fellow proud to be a soldier"?
In his intro to the song "It makes a fellow proud to be a soldier," Tom Lehrer says:
The army didn't have any, excuse me, didn't have no official song.
And after that the audience laughs. ...
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"Don't got" — how common is it in American usage?
I often hear the usage "don't got" in American English as spoken on TV programmes. Recently I was watching season four of "Prison Break" and one character, an Asian computer wizard, repeatedly used "...
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How productive is the verb prefix "un-"?
Is it possible to use un- with new words such as sit, sleep, sad? I'm currently seeing many words (in programming) which use un- in the meaning of undoing something.
For example, is it possible to ...
user16142
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"Do you not" vs. "Don't you"
I live in the UK and I mostly hear people saying Don't you..., but some people say: Do you not...? What is the difference and which one is more correct?
You can put any example really. Something like:...
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Is it "Don't let's" or "Let's don't"?
On Downton Abbey, I heard Mrs. Crawley say:
"Don't let's make a thing out of it!"
On The Goodwife, I heard Dianne Lockhart say:
"Let's don't invite trouble for ourselves."
It seems that both ...
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"Dare" with and without "to"
To my surprise, there's a missing question about this particularly interesting verb, dare. All I know about it is the fact it can be in two forms, as an auxiliary (without to: "I dare not mention ...
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The use of "not" in idiomatic English
The Daily Mirror recently used the phrase "Pentagon experts on Friday said it was impossible to imagine that the missile could not have been fired without Russian help". This exact phrase has appeared ...
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Understanding the purported ambiguity in “Every boy didn’t run”
I am a computer science professional.
I am reading the book Natural Language Understanding by James Allen where he writes:
“Every boy didn’t run” which is ambiguous between the read...
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If saying 'Why can't I ...?' is correct, would 'Why cannot I ...?' be technically correct?
Why can't I ...?
is perfectly correct grammar as far as I can tell. But what happens if the contraction is removed,
Why cannot I ...?
This sounds bizarre, but would this be technically correct ...
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"Like" versus "not unlike"
Just out of curiousity, how did this double negative come to be?
When I use it, it's often because I want to emphasise the fact that x is not y but is still similar in some way, whereas "like&...
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"Why can't I see?" or "Why I can't see?"?
Which of the following is correct?
Why can't I see?
Why I can't see?
I am a bit confused, since both have inversion, negation and a "why" in the beginning.
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No man (or woman) is an island
I was reading a satirical article in the New Yorker, "College Essay"
by Christopher Buckley, and came across the following statement:
It was a seventeenth-century English-person John Donne who ...
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What is the origin of auxiliary verbs?
When and why did we start using auxiliary verbs, particularly "do", to ask questions and make negatives?
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