One day, Squiggly and Aardvark were talking, and Aardvark told Squiggly, “Squiggly, you’re one of my best friends, if not my best friend!”
Naturally, Squiggly was touched. He said, “Aww, Aardvark! You’re my best friend, too!”
Now, though, imagine if the conversation had gone differently. Imagine if Aardvark had said, “Squiggly, you’re one of my best friends, if not my best friend.”
In that case, Squiggly would have said, “Well, that was pretty passive-aggressive, if you ask me. ‘One’ of your best friends? Oh, of course, I remember: I’m your second best friend!”
Aardvark would have said, “What are you talking about?”
And Squiggly would have said, “You think I didn’t hear about episode #435, on modal auxiliary verbs? The one where it said, ‘Squiggly is Aardvark’s second best friend’? Oh, I heard about that, all right.”
Then Aardvark would have said, “Boy, aren’t we salty!” And Squiggly would have said, “You know that’s an offensive thing to say to a snail!” Aardvark would have yelled, “Fine!” And Squiggly would have yelled, “Fine!” too, and they wouldn’t have spoken to each other again until Aardvark’s best friend Fenster got tired of Squiggly and Aardvark’s drama and arranged a reconciliation that ended with the two of them hugging it out.
Why would that imaginary conversation have gone so wrong, when Aardvark said the same thing to Squiggly as in their actual conversation? It’s not so much what Aardvark said as how he said it. When Aardvark enthusiastically told Squiggly, “You’re one of my best friends, if not my best friend!”, his tone made it clear that what he meant was, “You’re one of my best friends, and maybe even my very best friend.” But if he had used a doubtful tone of voice and said, “You’re one of my best friends, if not my best friend,” his tone would have carried the message, “You’re one of my best friends, although not good enough to be my absolute best friend.”
The troublesome part is the if not.
‘If Not’ Can Mean ‘Although Not’
Let’s talk about the “although not” meaning first. How exactly does if not come to have this meaning? Well, first of all, this doesn’t just happen with if not; in the same way, just plain if can also have an “although” meaning. For example, if I were a geometry teacher, I might say, “Fenster’s proof is correct, if sloppy.” This isn’t the ordinary meaning of if, because I’m not trying to say that if Fenster’s proof is sloppy, it must be correct. What I mean is, “Fenster’s proof is correct, even if it’s sloppy.” At this point, the connection to although is clearer: Even if has mostly the same meaning as even though, which has the same meaning as though or although.
Now let’s return to if not. If I said, “Fenster’s proof is correct, if not particularly elegant,” it would mean more or less the same thing as “Fenster’s proof is correct, even if it’s not particularly elegant,” or “Fenster’s proof is correct, although it’s not particularly elegant.” I’ll call this “concessive if,” since concession is the word grammarians use to talk about the kind of relationship expressed by words like although and even though.
‘If Not’ Can Mean ‘Maybe Even’
Now what about the “maybe even” meaning of if not? The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language says the function of if not in this situation is to “cancel an implicature.” OK, so what’s an implicature? We covered them more in-depth in episode 334, which I’ll link to in the transcript, but for now, it’s a message that you send that goes beyond what you say. For example, if I told you that Squiggly ate some of Aardvark’s chocolate, you would probably figure that Squiggly didn’t eat all of the chocolate. Why? Because if he had, I would have made the more informative statement of saying that Squiggly ate all of Aardvark’s chocolate. But what if I want to say that Squiggly definitely ate some of Aardvark’s chocolate, and he might have eaten it all, but I just don’t know? One way would be to say what I just said: Squiggly definitely ate some of Aardvark’s chocolate, and he might have eaten it all, but I just don’t know. Another way to cancel the implicature would be to say, “Squiggly ate at least some of Aardvark’s chocolate,” which also leaves open the possibility that he ate it all. Yet another way would be to say, “Squiggly ate some, and maybe even all, of Aardvark’s chocolate.”
But with all those ways of canceling the implicature that Squiggly ate all the chocolate, how does if not get into the mix? We still haven’t explained why you can say, “Squiggly ate some, if not all the chocolate” and mean that he might have eaten it all. In fact, it is possible to imagine a plausible progression from concessive if not to the if not that means “maybe even,” but we’ll need a different example to do it.
Suppose you’re telling about a really bad meal you had at some restaurant. You might want to say, “It was the worst meal I’ve ever had!” Now imagine that a somewhat pedantic friend says, “Really? The worst? You’ve never in your entire life had anything worse than that?” Then you might hedge a bit, saying that although it might not have been the absolute worst you ever had, it was certainly in the bottom 10. In other words, you might say, “Even if it wasn’t the worst meal I’ve ever had, it was one of the worst.” Or to shorten it even more, “It was one of the worst meals I’ve ever had, if not the worst.” This is concessive if not: You’re making a concession to a hypothetical listener who challenges your claim. You’re backing off from the claim that the meal is the absolute worst just to placate this imaginary challenger. However, people will probably be able to tell from your energy level that you’d actually like to make the stronger claim. In that way, the same concessive if not that backs you down from a stronger claim can also suggest that the stronger claim is the one you actually want to make.
At this point you may be trying to summarize a rule of thumb for knowing when if not has which meaning: If the speaker is making a strong claim that could be made even stronger, you get the implicature-cancelling “maybe even” meaning; if they’re making a fairly bland claim, you get the concessive “although not” meaning. Unfortunately, language isn’t so nice and neat. Once an English speaker has learned through a few examples that if not can mean “maybe even,” they probably won’t make a subtle distinction about strength of claims. They’ll just update their mental lexicon to say that if not has an idiomatic meaning of “maybe even,” and use it and interpret it accordingly.
So for example, saying that Squiggly ate some of Aardvark’s chocolate is not a particularly strong claim, but if I say, “Squiggly ate some, if not all, of Aardvark’s chocolate,” a significant percentage of people who hear the sentence will assume that I mean “maybe even all of Aardvark’s chocolate.” In fact, in the blog for the online version of the magazine The Economist, Robert Lane Greene conducted an informal survey for how people interpreted the sentence I'm a good tennis player, if not a great one, and of his 61 respondents, 44 thought it was more likely to mean, “I’m a good tennis player, and maybe even a great one,” while 17 thought it was more likely to mean, “I’m a good tennis player, although not a great one.”
Context can help you disambiguate if not, and intonation can make a difference, as it did in Squiggly and Aardvark’s conversation, but you can’t always rely on them. For example, in a radio interview a few weeks ago, a speaker talked about someone “tolerating, if not embracing, anti-Semitism,” and even knowing the context and hearing the sentence spoken didn’t make it clear which meaning the speaker intended.
In light of all that possible confusion, my recommendation is simply to avoid using if not for either of these idiomatic meanings. If you what you mean is “although not,” then say or write although not. If what you mean is “maybe even,” then say or write maybe even. At least, that’s my advice if clarity is your goal. If not, never mind.
Neal Whitman is an independent researcher and writer on language and grammar. He blogs at literalminded.wordpress.com, and tweets @LiteralMinded.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock.
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