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A couple of weeks ago I wrote a column on unintentionally confusing phrases, especially those for time, such as “push the date forward.” This provoked many readers to send in other examples of everyday locutions that they just can’t figure out. One that interests me particularly was sent in by John Kalbfleisch, who is baffled by the phrase “if not,” as used in sentences such as, “They download most, if not all, their movies.” Kalbfleisch gave me two more such sentences taken from this newspaper: “They try to save the lives, if not the arms and legs, of Haiti’s earthquake victims,” and “It is to maintain, if not expand the mission in Afghanistan.”

The phrase “if not” seems to have different meanings in these sentences. Kalbfleisch says that he would expect “if not” to mean something like “though not.” But in the first example here, it probably means the opposite: “They download most and possibly even all their movies.” And in the sentence about saving lives, it seems to mean something else again, something like, “They try to save at least the lives if they cannot save the arms and legs.” The third example probably means, again, “maintain and possibly even expand.”

So why do we use this phrase if its meaning can rotate, apparently, 180 degrees?

U.S. professor Paul Brians, on his useful website about common errors in English, says that the phrase “if not” makes some sense when it is used to link a weaker with a stronger word with a related meaning, as in: “He was smart if not exactly brilliant” (i.e., he was not quite brilliant), or “reasonably priced if not exactly cheap” (i.e., we wouldn’t go so far as to call it cheap). Brians explains that the phrase only becomes confusing when this weaker/stronger link does not exist between adjectives being compared, as in “obscure if not boring,” “happy if not entertained,” “anxious if not afraid.” Those examples are exactly what I’m talking about: What on Earth do they mean? “Obscure if not boring” seems to suggest, to me, that the speaker is implying boredom, but “happy if not entertained” seems to imply the opposite – i.e. that the subject is not entertained. These are, to me, thoroughly ambiguous pairings.

Furthermore, even one of the examples Brians gives as coherent usage still confuses me: “Unattractive if not downright ugly.” Here is the weaker/stronger comparison at work. So the phrase should make sense. But I still hesitate. Which adjective is meant to win out here?

Now consider the expression “nothing if not.” This grammar is nothing if not complicated. What does that mean? That it is complicated or it is not? I think most people will interpret such a sentence to mean that if you can’t call this grammar complicated, you can’t call it anything at all – in other words, it is complicated above all else. The expression is at least as old as Shakespeare: In Othello, Iago calls himself “nothing if not critical,” and the line is usually said to mean that he is admitting to being incapable of praise. It’s that famous line, I’m guessing, that contemporary speakers are imitating when they use the phrase. The art critic Robert Hughes titled a collection of essays Nothing If Not Critical, after Iago, and I don’t think he meant to create ambiguity. But I still find it a strange turn of phrase and I wonder if it adds clarity of any sort to a thought.

Nothing is generally a tricky word. “Nothing less than” can be confusing. “He desired nothing less than a revolution” means he desired a genuine revolution. But, “He resembled nothing less than a scarecrow” might give one pause for a millisecond: Could it mean that he does not resemble a scarecrow at all (i.e., he resembled nothing less than he resembled a scarecrow)? And it’s easy to make a mistake with singulars and plurals with nothing: “Nothing but fire trucks were in the street” is incorrect; nothing is always singular. (It’s more clear if you write, “There was nothing but fire trucks in the street.”)

But then all words are tricky, really. It’s no reason to stop using them. We can hardly banish nothing from our vocabulary. Just as I can’t banish “nothing if not” from common discourse, or eliminate the ambiguous “x if not y” construction from newspaper stories. Those phrases are not incorrect. I just try to refrain from using them myself, that’s all, because I want my meaning to be clear.

Speaking of incorrect, is no one else puzzled by the words to the CTV Olympic anthem I Believe, as sung by Nikki Yanofsky? She believes, apparently, “in the power of you and I.” She believes in the power of I. What a strange way to speak – it’s as if I said “I do not believe in the brain of she.” Is this phrase incorrect or just hugely awkward? Grammarians, angry linguists, aidez-moi: rsmith@globeandmail.com.