Stan Carey

On misnegation and overnegation and how they can trip up writers:
https://blog.oup.com/2026/03/implicit-negation-is-easy-to-miss/

Battistella's piece cites this post of mine on misnegation and why it shouldn't be overestimated, I mean underestimated: https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2018/11/19/misnegation-should-not-be-overestimated-i-mean-underestimated/

#language #semantics #writing #WritingCommunity #negation #linguistics

Implicit negation is easy to miss

One of the odder bits of language use is the phenomenon of overnegation, or misnegation.

OUPblog
9:59amWeb
Show threadAdam8h ago

@stancarey One of the features of a bunch of those examples is that "unable to be overestimated" corresponds in polarity to "unwise to be underestimated".

So with "can" and "may" having the meanings both of "has ability/potential to" and "has permission to", there is plenty of scope for genuine ambiguity.