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** Yes, it's convoluted. Tolkien describes some of the guests as trying to work out whether it came to a compliment.
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* A comparatively simple example from the AmericanCivilWar: Congressman Thaddeus Stevens' "retraction" about something he said about Lincoln's first minister of war, fellow Pennsylvania Republican Simon Cameron (accused of corruption) after Cameron objected: "I said that Cameron would not steal a red-hot stove. I now take that back."
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* A {{Dilbert}} strip features the PHB giving Dilbert a document to fill out that features close to a dozen negatives regarding the state of his employment.
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* A {{Dilbert}} strip [[http://dilbert.com/fast/1993-03-26/ strip]] features the PHB giving Dilbert a document to fill out that features close to a dozen negatives regarding the state of his employment.
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*** He manages to slip in a nice StealthInsult right alongside the compliment, though, so he can obviously still keep it straight even at a hundred and eleven.
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[[folder:Radio]]
* In one episode of [[ImSorryIllReadThatAgain I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again]], the show is introduced thus:
--->'''Hatch:''' Yes, it's--or if I'm wrong again, it isn't--"I'm Not Sorry, I Won't Read That For the First Time." Which doesn't mean that Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Cleese, Graeme Garden, David Hatch, Jo Kendall and Bill Oddie aren't with you again. I'm almost negative about this.
--->'''Brooke-Taylor:''' David ... David's flipped again, everybody.
[[/folder]]
* In one episode of [[ImSorryIllReadThatAgain I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again]], the show is introduced thus:
--->'''Hatch:''' Yes, it's--or if I'm wrong again, it isn't--"I'm Not Sorry, I Won't Read That For the First Time." Which doesn't mean that Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Cleese, Graeme Garden, David Hatch, Jo Kendall and Bill Oddie aren't with you again. I'm almost negative about this.
--->'''Brooke-Taylor:''' David ... David's flipped again, everybody.
[[/folder]]
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*** He has the best excuse ever, though - he's turning one hundred and eleven years old. At that age, it's hard to keep ''anything'' straight, let alone how many people in the Shire that you actually like.
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* The Duchess in ''AliceInWonderland'': "Be what you would seem to be -- or, if you'd like it put more simply -- Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise." [[hottip:*:(The second version of the moral actually reduces to "Never imagine yourself to be what you are not", which does not ''quite'' mean the same as the first version.)]]
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* In the ''PushingDaisies'' episode "Window Dressed to Kill", Olive tries to mess with Ned's head by using complex sentences after being on the receiving end of this trope.
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* In the ''PushingDaisies'' episode "Window Dressed to Kill", Olive tries to mess with Ned's head by using complex sentences after being on the receiving end of this trope. First, however, she consults a book titled "The Double Negative: What You Shouldn't Not Know".
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-> '''Prince Charming''': You! You can't lie. So tell me puppet, where is Shrek?\\
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-> '''Prince Charming''': You! [[CannotTellALie You can't lie.lie]]. So tell me puppet, where is Shrek?\\
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** The examination of the wording actually reveals that he's saying he would like to know half of the people better, and the other half he hates, but they don't deserve it. So, really, he's obscuring that he ''likes'' his guests by making it sound as though he ''hates'' them.
*** 'Hate' is a pretty harsh term. He's just saying that he doesn't like half of his guests as much as they'd deserve.
*** 'Hate' is a pretty harsh term. He's just saying that he doesn't like half of his guests as much as they'd deserve.
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** He was supposed to be drunk beyond caring; I think it's a bit much to expect for it to make any real sense.
*** Playing drunk, anyway. More likely he was being clever but it just went way over the heads of the assembled drunk Hobbits.
*** Playing drunk, anyway. More likely he was being clever but it just went way over the heads of the assembled drunk Hobbits.
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* A linguistics professor was lecturing to her class one day. "In English," she said, "A double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative." A voice from the back of the class says, "Yeah, ''right''."
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* A linguistics professor was lecturing to her class one day. "In English," she said, "A double negative forms a positive. In some languages, though, such as Russian, a double negative is still a negative. However, there is no language wherein a double positive can form a negative." A voice from the back of the class says, "Yeah, ''right''.''[[SarcasmMode right]]''."
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http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/negative.png
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--> '''Bill S. Preston, Esquire''': "That was non, non non, non heinous!"
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* On FamilyGuy the man with alternating names [[HonestJohnsDealership who's always cheating Peter]] tells him "if you'll just sign this contract without reading it you won't not be not loving your new time share in no time."
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* On FamilyGuy the man with alternating names [[HonestJohnsDealership who's always cheating Peter]] tells him "if you'll just sign this contract without reading it it, I'll take your blank check and you won't not be not loving your new time share timeshare in no time."
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* African-American Vernacular English, as well as several Southern dialects, have similar rules as above concerning double negatives, wherein "He ain't never been nowhere but here" is grammatically correct, with each additional negative either describing tense and aspect or simply intensifying the magnitude of the statement.
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* Becomes a major plot point in ''[[LostSkeletonOfCadavra The Lost Skeleton Returns Again]]'' after Chinfa, Queen of the Cantaloupe People, is introduced to the concept of the double negative.
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* Becomes a major plot point in ''[[LostSkeletonOfCadavra ''[[TheLostSkeletonOfCadavra The Lost Skeleton Returns Again]]'' after Chinfa, Queen of the Cantaloupe People, is introduced to the concept of the double negative.
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* In MarvelUltimateAlliance, Thing confuses ''himself''. What he says and what he means are complete opposites.:
--> '''Thing:''' "[The fact that beating up Rhino is fun ([[ItMakesSenseInContext don't ask)]]] don't mean I wouldn't rather have a face that don't look like a gravel road".
--> '''Thing:''' "[The fact that beating up Rhino is fun ([[ItMakesSenseInContext don't ask)]]] don't mean I wouldn't rather have a face that don't look like a gravel road".
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May need some Wiki Magic
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* ''[[RedVsBlue Red vs. Blue]]'': Sarge utilizes one of these, though more likely because he really thinks that way and is trying to emphasize his point and not because he's trying to confuse anyone.
--> '''Sarge:''' Okay. And everyone in favor of not doing that thing and leaving her asleep and not getting killed by the person we're not going to wake up because nobody is that stupid, say Nay.
--> '''Simmons:''' That was like a... quadruple negative.
--> '''Sarge:''' Okay. And everyone in favor of not doing that thing and leaving her asleep and not getting killed by the person we're not going to wake up because nobody is that stupid, say Nay.
--> '''Simmons:''' That was like a... quadruple negative.
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* In Al TV, when [[WeirdAlYankovic "Weird Al" Yankovic's]] "interviews" {{Eminem}}, he calls him out on a tripe negative. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPwBdnknGIs "I don't owe anyone in my family nothin"]]
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* In Al TV, when [[WeirdAlYankovic "Weird Al" Yankovic's]] Yankovic]] "interviews" {{Eminem}}, he calls him out on a tripe negative. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPwBdnknGIs "I don't owe anyone in my family nothin"]]
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* In Al TV, when [[WeirdAlYankovic "Weird Al" Yankovic's]] "interviews" {{Eminem}}, he calls him out on a tripe negative. [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPwBdnknGIs "I don't owe anyone in my family nothin"]]
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** Old joke. A governor has been in charge for so long, people want him out. So he starts a referendum: The "yes" is for him to stay and the "no" is for him to not resign.
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** Furthermore, while on the Spanish topic, a sentence like "No tengo nada de azúcar" means "I don't have any sugar" but literally translates as "I don't have nothing of sugar". That happens because, while in English "''negative'' + any" (''I don't have any sugar'') is not dissimilar from "''positive'' + no" (''I have no sugar''), the Spanish word "nada" serves the equivalent role of both the noun "nothing" and "any" in sentences like "I don't have any sugar", thus creating another case of double negative. Kinda makes you think that the Spanish language makes sure that a no is a no.
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** Furthermore, while on the Spanish topic, a sentence like "No tengo nada de azúcar" nada" means "I don't have any sugar" anything" but literally translates as "I don't have nothing of sugar". nothing". That happens because, while in English "''negative'' + any" (''I don't have any sugar'') anything'') is not dissimilar from "''positive'' + no" (''I have no sugar''), nothing''), the Spanish word "nada" serves the equivalent role of both the pronoun and noun "nothing" and "any" in sentences like "I don't have any sugar", the pronoun "anything", thus creating another case of double negative. Kinda makes you think that the Spanish language makes sure that a no is remains a no.
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** Furthermore, while on the Spanish topic, a sentence like "No tengo nada de azúcar" means "I don't have any sugar" but literally translates as "I don't have nothing of sugar". That happens because, while in English "''negative'' + any" (''I don't have any sugar'') is not dissimilar from "''positive'' + no" (''I have no sugar''), the Spanish word "nada" serves the equivalent role of both the noun "nothing" and "any" in sentences like "I don't have any sugar", thus creating another case of double negative. Kinda makes you think that the Spanish language makes sure that a no is a no.
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Explained the Bilbo example.
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** He "doesn't know half of them half as well as he should like," which means he wishes he knew half of them better, he's lamenting that he doesn't know them well enough ("half as well" as he'd like to), and he "likes less than half of them half as well as they deserve," which means there's a minority of them ("less than half") who he only likes "half as well as they deserve." In other words, he's saying he doesn't like them as much as he should, that they're better than he knows. It's all quite complimentary. The most convoluted compliment in literature, perhaps, but complimentary none-the-less.
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* Italian can have double negatives work as simple negatives as well. Sometimes you can avoid them ("Non c'è nessun problema/Non c'è alcun problema" both mean "There's no problem", but while "nessuno" implicates a negation and works just like "no one", "alcuno" doesn't and is similar to "anyone"); sometimes you can't ("Non vedo nessuno" would literally translate in "I don't see no one", while it actually means "I don't see anyone"). It's quite strange if one thinks that Italian is the direct descendant of Latin, and that Latin counts double negatives as positives: the Latin phrase "sine ulla spe" ("senza alcuna speranza" = "without hope") cannot be written as "sine nulla spe" ("without no hope") because it would radically change its meaning. Italian's use of negatives comes from Vulgar Latin, spoken by peasants ad illiterate people who probably wouldn't bother using the correct rules of the original language. Vulgar Latin became soon an almost independent language much more used than Classical Latin, and so its use of the negative form passed on to modern neo-Latin languages such as Spanish, French ad Italian itself, of course.
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* In the first ''ParappaTheRapper'', Cheap Cheap raps that she "ain't got no time for nobody".
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** London Mayor BorisJohnson won the 2004 Foot in Mouth award with this gem on ''HaveIGotNewsForYou'': "I could not fail to disagree with you less."
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** Averted in Boston (possibly Massachusetts as a whole), where guides widely published before elections detail ''exactly'' what each response means, and such information is usually/always stated plainly at the end of the question on the actual ballot, as well. Probably by law or something.
* London Mayor BorisJohnson won the 2004 Foot in Mouth award with this gem on ''HaveIGotNewsForYou'': "I could not fail to disagree with you less."
* London Mayor BorisJohnson won the 2004 Foot in Mouth award with this gem on ''HaveIGotNewsForYou'': "I could not fail to disagree with you less."
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*Bavarian, a Southern German dialect group, has this too. An example would be "Koana hot niamois ned koa Göid ned g'habt" literally "Nobody has never not no money not had".
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* Spanish, like the Russian level above, is completely fine with double negatives. For example, the sentence "No té ayudaré nunca" translates literally as "I won't never help you," when it actually means "I will never help you." More than one negative adds emphasis, but it rarely, if ever, goes above two.
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linked George Carlin to his TV Tropes page
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* George Carlin told people, "I'm not unwell, thank you," when asked how he was. It usually took them a minute to figure it out.
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* George Carlin GeorgeCarlin told people, "I'm not unwell, thank you," when asked how he was. It usually took them a minute to figure it out.
