hyponegation

English

Etymology

hypo- (“deficient”) +‎ negation

Noun

hyponegation (uncountable)

  1. Implied negation in a sentence.
    • 2010, Laurence R. Horn, The Expression of Negation, →ISBN, page 138:
      A rich crosslinguistic vein for mining both hypernegation (which doesn't count when it "should") and hyponegation (which counts when it "shouldn't") is that of the inverse readings of proximative adverbs like almost and barely.
Examples

I could care less
Fat chance of that happening

Antonyms
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