double negative

1. 1.

   an affirmative constructed from two negatives

   “A not unwelcome outcome”

   Broaderaffirmative
2. 2.

   a grammatically substandard but emphatic negative

   “I don't never go”

   Broadernegative

Questions about double negative

What does double negative mean?

double negative means "an affirmative constructed from two negatives". That is the primary sense; the word has 2 in total, listed in full on this page.

Is double negative a common word?

double negative is banded "Rare" — specialist or archaic — most readers will not have met it. The band comes from how often the word appears in a large corpus of everyday English, not from an editor's impression.