Aleck,

Just to give you a bit of forewarning, Flatfoot is an English teacher wink

Flatfoot also mentions how some languages use what we might describe as 'double negatives' to reinforce the degree of negativity. I seem to recall someone saying that Russian does this, for example. While English usually frowns on double negatives as poor language use, we still have this to a very limited degree with the 'nor' conjunction.

Then, too, there are those phrases that incorporate a prefix with negative connotations alongside negative words. For example, the sentence "Mr Jones was not incompetent" (taken from the Wikepedia article on double negatives found here). That sentence could also be expanded to include even more negatives: such as, "Mr Jones was not incompetent nor inconsiderate" ... etc.

Noel

MY SONGS...
Audiophile BIAB 2024