Language Log

Headline from the Los Angeles Times: "South Korea's obsession with speedskating isn't hard to miss."

Today's Zits: …plus the obligatory link to the Misnegation Archive.

Daniel J. Wakin, "Met Reverses Itself on Reviews Ban by Opera News", NYT 5/22/2012: The Metropolitan Opera on Tuesday backed away from its decision to bar reviews of its productions in Opera News, its affiliated magazine and the leading opera publication in the country. The Met said an “outpouring of reaction” from opera fans on […]

Miguel Helft, "Twins’ Facebook Fight Rages On", NYT 12/30/2010 (emphasis added): As they talked about the Facebook case, no detail was too small to omit, from where they first met Mr. Zuckerberg (the Kirkland House dining room) to the layout of Mr. Zuckerberg’s dorm room, to the content of the e-mails he had sent them […]

This post from Amy Hamblin's Community Blog was on the front page of the Obama-Biden web site for a while last night: We're still awaiting the final results tonight, but one thing is clear — this grassroots movement can never be underestimated. Thank you to everyone who helped us make an astounding 1,053,791 calls today! […]

During today's episode of "Angelo Cataldi and the Morning Gang" on WIP sports talk radio, there was an interview with Doug Pederson, the coach of the Philadelphia Eagles. One exchange caught my linguistic (as opposed to sports fan) attention: Your browser does not support the audio element.   Angelo Cataldi: Doug, did you ever think […]

Mr John Kelly, an attorney for Melania Trump, reading out a statement concerning why she has just scored nearly $3million in a London libel suit (reported here in The Guardian; I reproduce the use of "right-handed" found in the article, despite its oddness): The article was illustrated with an old photograph of the claimant standing […]

In addition to the many "nots" he uttered in last night's debate, Trump poured on the negations in this tweet today: Hillary's been failing for 30 years in not getting the job done – it will never change. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 27, 2016

After last night's doozy of a Republican debate, Meghan McCain tweeted the following this morning: Every negative stereotype I have tried to combat for the last 8 years about republicans has been utterly destroyed in the past 9 months. — Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) March 4, 2016 McCain's dim view of the current crop of presidential […]

Gigi Douban, "Tim Cook goes to Washington", Marketplace Morning Report 5/21/13, commented on Apple's tax-avoidance techniques (basically stashing profits overseas and arranging to pay no taxes on them, by transferring intellectual property assets to an paper subsidiary in Ireland and then paying extensive royalties to this foreign aspect of itself, which through a quirk of […]

John Podheretz, tweeting about Wayne LaPierre's proposal to put armed guards in every American school: The awful part of what LaPierre just did is until he spoke there was nothing uncontroversial about having security at schools — John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) December 21, 2012 When he wrote "… there was nothing uncontroversial about …", he clearly meant […]

Ben Yagoda spotted a nice case of overnegation on NPR's "Morning Edition" earlier today, when Renee Montagne interviewed political science professor Michael McDonald about early voting. After explaining that Obama was leading in early voting in Nevada, McDonald said, "I don't want to discourage people from not voting today."

From Lauri Karttunen (via Arnold Zwicky): I have come to realize that there are a lot of examples on the web of the type "not want to not X" that seem to say the opposite of what they mean. Here are a few: She failed to give the patient CPR and turned an ambulance away […]