Huh - now you even have me confused:
The opposite of "trivial" is "significant" (not complex)
The opposite of "non-trivial" is trivial
Therefor "non-trivial" == "significant"
Is that what you are trying to say?
-Paul
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Alan Ackerman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>OK, I give up. Why is "Warning: writing such code yourself is
>non-trivial!" a litotes?
>I looked up "litotes" in Wikipedia at
><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litotes>. I can see how "not
>non-trivial" would be a litotes, but why is "non-trivial"?
Welcome back, Alan!
The page says:
"
In rhetoric, litotes is a figure of speech in which the speaker either
strengthens or weakens the emphasis of a claim by denying its opposite. The
literal meaning of a litotes is "not X (but not necessarily Y)", and a litotes
can be used as an understatement, actually meaning "very much Y," or to express
ambivalence.
"
So, in this case, it's being used as understatement: "non-trivial" == "very
much [Y]" where
Y = opposite(trivial) = "complex".
Now, if this were IBM-MAIN, we'd go off on a tangent about how English is a
complex language and probably end up in some sort of ****ing contest, until the
moderator there killed the thread ...
...phsiii
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