Not for nothing

[Henry Flower]

Pierre, it's actually very simple - or at least it should be to someone who studies the 'cultural production of literature' and has read the most obscure plays of Tennyson.

What we understand as a double negative is in short an error. "I haven't done nothing wrong" - where the person should correctly be saying "I haven't done anything wrong". It's a common error among certain classes.

'Not for nothing' is NOT what we would usually call a double negative because it is not an error. Indeed, it is rarely used by the sort of person who would make the error of using a double negative. It is an accepted and oft-used phrase. It has a touch of poetry about it.

* Double negatives are usually errors of grammar.

* 'Not for nothing' is more often used by the educated and is not described as a double negative because it is not an error.

* 'Not for nothing' has nothing to do with the Whitechapel Murders.

It really couldn't be any clearer.

If you don't understand THAT, you shouldn't be on the boards, you should go play somewhere more suited to your level.

[andy1867]

Goes on forever this doesn't it?
Ive read Pierres posts, and I am in no way an expert, but Ive bought enough crappy books on the subject to know when someones simply ripping it out of you so to speak....I boil it all down to ..
"Who would you have a pint with?" at this point of the argument..
I can imagine walkin' into a pub and Mr Osram asking me
"What would you like to drink?"
I say.."A pint of bitter"
he gets me a pint of bitter..
Walking into a pub and and Pierre asking me "what I want to drink"
I say "A pint of bitter"
He asks me "Why...whats a matter with cider,? was I hit on the head by an apple when I was a kid..whats the matter with lager, why not whisky,? do you hate the Scots..etc etc etc
Pierre your first post on here was regarding a suspect you had, since then, you have simply tried to pick the brains of the more knowledgeable on here
...I know that...cos I do it...
but I do it openly, I admit I know very little, but do have an interest, and to be fair, most on here are quite happy to pass on what they know, where I might have gone wrong, and what ive got mixed up
you can't seem to bring yourself to do that, thats why you go round and round in circles, with every post virtually ending in a question .....
There is no shame in saying you know nowt..Its the internet...leaves no bruises at all....
"My names Andy...I know very little about Jack the ripper"
C'mon Pierre....join the club, it will be a massive weight offa yer shoulders....


Or...


Name your suspect, cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war

[David Orsam]

I have other things to do and the exercise of this thread is finished.

My dear boy, you have no idea how pleased I am to hear you say that. I look forward now to you doing all the other things that you have to do and not hearing from you again for some considerable time.

Mind you, it doesn't affect my mark for your post #73 which remains at a very disappointing E minus.

[Albert]

....and the winner is...David (as usual).

[Henry Flower]

I have other things to do and the exercise of this thread is finished.

'exercise' - the word a man uses when he had no point to make, failed to arouse anything but scorn, and wants to sound clever and in-control about his failure.

[Pierre]

'exercise' - the word a man uses when he had no point to make, failed to arouse anything but scorn, and wants to sound clever and in-control about his failure.

Dear Henry,

I am not interested in being clever but I wanted you to understand that people who saw the GSG didnīt understand much of it, but still they had their opinions about it. What we used was an heuristic method, it has many advantages.

Cheers, Pierre

[GUT]

Dear David,

Amusing as it may be to read your posts about posts, I have other things to do and the exercise of this thread is finished. The reflections you have posted in connection to my conclusions are just reflections on earlier statements with very varying opinions about this and that, where nothing of it has any relevance for the question about the idiom "Not for nothing" except from the pure reflecting of people on that expression, in the same way people in 1888 reflected on the GSG. The conclusions are there. Thanks for participating my dear David.

All the best, Pierre

Two points

"I have other things to do"

Gee I hope that means you're going to be too busy to bug us for a while.

"The exercise of this thread is finished"

Wonder who gave You the power to say when threads were finished or not

[Henry Flower]

Dear Henry,

I am not interested in being clever but I wanted you to understand that people who saw the GSG didnīt understand much of it, but still they had their opinions about it. What we used was an heuristic method, it has many advantages.

Cheers, Pierre

If that's what you wanted us to understand, great teacher, you failed to persuade. You failed also to demonstrate that there was anything to be gained by accepting that those who saw the GSG 'didn't understand much of it'.

'We' didn't use an heuristic method. You may have thought you were. Most of us have another name for your technique.

It has many advantages? In the hands of a genuine scholar or researcher, that might well be true. But that's not what happened here.

[Henry Flower]

Dear Henry,

I am not interested in being clever but I wanted you to understand that people who saw the GSG didnīt understand much of it, but still they had their opinions about it. What we used was an heuristic method, it has many advantages.

Cheers, Pierre

This thread is not about the GSG in itself but it is about the expression
"not for nothing".

So let's be clear: you wanted us to understand that "people" who "saw" the GSG didn't understand much of it but still had their opinions about it, and you did this by not discussing the GSG, but instead by discussing a phrase that does not appear in the GSG, by removing some words from it and using them in a manner completely different from their use in that artifact? And then by feigning some point-scoring hyper-stupidity about what is and isn't merely cockney, or playing the fool over what is and what is not a genuine double-negative.

And you expect us to believe that by doing this you have learned or demonstrated something?

Are you effing deluded? Seriously, you think anyone is falling for this pathetic charade?

[GUT]

So let's be clear: you wanted us to understand that "people" who "saw" the GSG didn't understand much of it but still had their opinions about it, and you did this by not discussing the GSG, but instead by discussing a phrase that does not appear in the GSG, by removing some words from it and using them in a manner completely different from their use in that artifact? And then by feigning some point-scoring hyper-stupidity about what is and isn't merely cockney, or playing the fool over what is and what is not a genuine double-negative.

And you expect us to believe that by doing this you have learned or demonstrated something?

Are you effing deluded? Seriously, you think anyone is falling for this pathetic charade?

In regards to your last two questions,

My opinion (just my opinion mind you) is Yes to both of them.

[harry]

Pierre
In answer to your post (96),how many saw it?

[GUT]

So more of his rubbish a thread that's not really about what he said it was about.

Probably about time his oxygen got cut off.

[John Wheat]

So more of his rubbish a thread that's not really about what he said it was about.

Probably about time his oxygen got cut off.

Why doesn't he just name his suspect? Or if he hasn't got one **** off?

[Bridewell]

Naturally I had to mention it to explain that this is not a discussion about it.

Cheers, Pierre

Of course you didn't. You didn't deem it necessary to list all the other possible subjects that it wasn't about!

[Bridewell]

Dear Henry,

I am not interested in being clever but I wanted you to understand that people who saw the GSG didnīt understand much of it, but still they had their opinions about it. What we used was an heuristic method, it has many advantages.

Cheers, Pierre

In the opening post of this thread you claimed that it was not about the GSG:-

This thread is not about the GSG in itself but it is about the expression
"not for nothing".

In this thread anyone can publish versions of this expression, so that we may have a collection of different uses of it.

I therefore invite those who have some examples to publish them here.

The only requirement is that the examples contain the construction "not for nothing" and were written by authors born in Victorian times or earlier, but preferably Victorian times.

Firstly, the expression was constructed like this in the GSG (just a reminder, no discussion about the GSG now). (My emphasis).

Either it is or it isn't. If it is about the GSG you should be honest and concede the point. If it is not about the GSG then your references to it are off topic. Make your mind up. You can't have it both ways!