When I first began this blog almost two months ago I descried it as "[a] blog about science, law, language, and the arts." Well, I've had exactly one post so far tagged "language" -- a rant (footnoted, I want to note) about how words do not have meaning but convey meaning. It was deeply insightful.
With this in mind, I wish to note for you, my dear likely well spoken reader, that people -- and by "people" I mean "people who are speakers of English in the United States" -- often use the phrase "cannot understate" to mean "cannot overstate," a loathsome phrase itself for many reasons.1 My friends at the blog Language Log -- and by "friends" here I mean "intellectual superiors" -- which, by the way, says more insightful things about language in general and English in particular than I will ever muster here -- have carefully analyzed this situation. Here's Language Log's list of relevant posts (yikes):
"Negated, or not" 1/21/2004
"I challenge anyone to refute that this negative is not unnecessary" 1/21/2004
"Challenge as negation" 1/23/2004
"Too complex to avoid judgment?" 2/21/2004
"Who is to be master?" 2/21/2004
"On not avoiding negatives" 2/21/2004
"Why are negations so easy to fail to miss?" 2/26/2004
"Overnegation supererogation" 3/12/2004
"Another overnegation" 4/27/2004
"We cannot/must not understate/overstate" 5/26/2004
"Another overnegation opportunity: Yet vs. Yet to" 5/31/2004
"Overstating understatement" 6/22/2004
"Nothing that cannot impede even by failure" 8/16/2004
"Rumsfeld overnegates Powell, Powell uses 'fulsome' correctly" 11/16/2004
"Overnegation alert" 1/11/2005
"Still unpacked after all these years" 5/17/2005
"Still upacked: threat or menace?" 5/17/2005
"The temptation of overnegation" 5/23/2005
"Things that are rarely better than they normally are" 10/17/2005
"Never anything but less than precise" 10/20/2005
"Negation, over- and under-" 12/21/2005
"On not emerging unscathed" 3/1/2006
"Not doubting that the door could not be opened wider" 6/5/2006
"Unlike no other" 7/27/2006
"It's hard not to read this and not do a double-take" 8/1/2006
" Been anything so long it looks like not to me" 8/3/2006
"The most powerful person no one has ever heard of" 5/23/2006
"Not doubting that the door could not be opened wider" 6/5/2006
"Overnegation as obfuscation" 8/9/2006
"Scalar failure" 3/5/2007
"Everyone was spared no mercy" 3/26/2007
"Barely missing a chance to overanalyze" 4/1/2007
"Total undernegation" 4/17/2007
"Before nary an overnegation could be uttered" 5/27/2007
"Undernegation of the day" 6/14/2007
"Multiplex negatio feblondiat" 7/14/2007
"Weird logic and Bayesian semantics" 7/15/2007
"Couldn't be more" 9/29/2007
"I'll teach you to undernegate!" 12/22/2007
"That'll teach me …" 1/6/2008
"Ask Language Log: More or less?" 6/30/2008
"The Astonishment Effect in negation" 7/20/2008
"Negation plus exclusion: a dangerous pairing" 9/14/2008
"Electoral overnegation" 11/5/2008
"'Cannot underestimate' = 'must not underestimate'" 11/6/2008
"'Any' = 'hardly any'?" 12/26/2008
"Still ahead of his time" 2/10/2009
"A long time since we did not meet" 2/23/2009
"I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't" 2/23/2009
"Misunderestimation" 4/4/2009
"Candidates must be a student" 4/16/2009
"The reality could not be further from the truth" 4/20/2009
"Misnegation in the Encyclopedia Britannica" 4/26/2009
"Annals of scalar predication" 1/1/2009
"The shyness of architects" 4/15/2009
"The risk that the taxpayer does not bear a disproportionate burden" 6/24/2009
"No detail too small" 11/27/2009
"No wug is too dax to be zonged" 11/28/2009
"We can't be second to none", 1/31/2010
"Imprudent not to expect a silver bullet" 2/13/2010
"Nothing that wasn't something one might not hear" 2/25/2010
"Undernegation: the truth behind the lie we told one another", 10/7/2010
"Logic Problem", 10/10/2010
"Misnegation of the week", 11/13/2010
"Theological misnegation?", 11/20/2010
"A classic overnegation", 12/31/2010
"Gov. Cuomo and our poor monkey brains", 1/21/2011
"Nos pauvres cerveaux de singe, à la française", 1/22/2011
"The second life of 'in no uncertain terms'", 1/24/2011
"Miss not", 2/3/2011
"Not sacrificing anything to prevent anything…not", 2/20/2011
"Much less/Or even", 2/24/2011
"Nothing if not un__", 7/21/2011
"Never no one without Cornish", 8/1/2011
"Everything cannot not be unbelievable, either", 8/10/2011
"Hypernegative 'miss not' in Hemingway", 10/8/2011
"Deceptively valuable", 10/16/2011
"Impunity", 11/10/2011
"Never fails: Semantic overachievers", 12/1/2011
"Multiple negation: Over-reaching again", 12/2/2011
"Newt's negation", 12/2/2011
"No less X", 2/24/2012
"…not understating the threat", 6/5/2012
"(Not) Underestimating the Irish Famine", 9/16/2012
I think it's fair to say they've carefully thought about this. Now to get to reading them all ...
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1 "Cannot overstate," is loathsome because it is is a bizarre locution meaning, often, "I wish to use the superlative, but I don't know how to do it here. It's not just like whoa, but WHOA due." Or it may be just a trite observation that our society does not have any adjectival form beyond the superlative: "that's the highest I can state it so I per force cannot overstate it." Or it may be a suggestion that something akin to the infinite is warranted here. Regardless, it smacks of hyperbole, um, of the worst kind.
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