Definition:
(1) A nonstandard form using two negatives for emphasis where only one is necessary. (2) A standard form using two negatives to express a positive ("She is not unhappy").
Examples and Observations:
- "Ther nas no man nowher so vertuous."
(Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Friar's Tale" in The Canterbury Tales) - "Nor never none
Shall mistress of it be, save I alone."
(William Shakespeare, Viola in Twelfth Night) - "You ain’t heard nothin’ yet, folks!"
(Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer) - "Syntactically, perhaps the chief characteristic of vulgar American is its sturdy fidelity to the double negative. So freely is it used, indeed, that the simple negative appears to be almost abandoned. Such phrases as 'I see nobody,' 'I could hardly walk,' 'I know nothing about it' are heard so seldom among the masses of the people that they appear to be affectations when encountered; the well-nigh universal forms are 'I don’t see nobody,' 'I couldn’t hardly walk,' and 'I don’t know nothing about it.'"
(H. L. Mencken, The American Language, 1921) - "Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges!"
(Alfonso Bedoya as Gold Hat in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, 1948) - "I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more."
(Bob Dylan, "Maggie's Farm") - "Most kinds of double negative are inappropriate in spoken
and written Standard English except in jocular use . . .. This was not always so, however, and the double negative remains one of the best illustrations of what was once a perfectly acceptable locution being driven by the decisions of grammarians, not out of the language, but out of Standard use."
(Kenneth G. Wilson, The Columbia Guide to Standard American English, Columbia University Press, 1993) - "We don't need no education.
We don't need no thought control."
(Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, "Another Brick in the Wall")
