Name: The negative form.

Age: Slightly younger than the positive form.

Appearance: Transformative.

So, what are we talking about here – the negative space in art, occasionally used itself to form the “real” subject of an image or sculpture? Negative.

Is it a reference to John Keats’s negative capability? Has someone shed further light on the artistic capacity to pursue truth and beauty without the pressure or constraints of logic and science? That’s a hard no.

What, then? We’re talking the simple linguistic point, whereby you can take a sentence and by the addition of a “no” or a “not” at the appropriate syntactical juncture, transform its meaning into its opposite.

“I would like an ice cream” versus “I would not like an ice cream”? Yes. Except in this case it’s more like: “I have committed treason in Helsinki and in full view of the world’s press” versus: “I have not committed treason in Helsinki and in full view of the world’s press.”

Oh, this is a Trump thing, isn’t it? At the recent summit with Vladimir Putin, the US president dismissed the meticulously gathered evidence of his own intelligence services about Russian interference in the 2016 election and said: “He [President Putin] just said it was not Russia. I don’t see any reason why it would be.”

Is that treason? Or is it not? It … is. Or is not. Because, after a bipartisan outcry, Trump claimed that he “misspoke” and meant to say: “I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be. Sort of a double negative.”

That’s not true, though. You mean you can’t get no sense out of it?

No, I can get sense out of it, in the sense that there is no sense to be got out of it because that’s not how a double negative works. I think you are now not unconfused by the situation. The important thing is that it has sparked some excellent memes and tweets, including CNN contributor Erin Ryan’s: “Ask not what your country can not do for you but what you can not do for your country,” and many others leaping towards: “I did have sex with that woman.” and “I am not a Berliner.”

In a weird way, it’s a move that could bring geopolitics back into alignment. By his logic, fake news just became news, Kim Jong-un is a tyrant, not all Mexicans are rapists and women don’t like having their pussies grabbed. I wouldn’t – and I mean wouldn’t – get your hopes up.

Do say: “Does this mean Brexit DOESN’T mean Brexit?”

Don’t say: “But we’d still have to know what Brexit didn’t mean in the first place.”