The Davis Square Community

Linguistically, yes. The way the brain works, in the instance of negation of something, is to first imagine (remember~reconstruct) what that something is, and then imagine it disappearing. So in the brain, most people would imagine feathers on something that is flying - "Hey!" the brain says, "I know this one! A bird!" - and then removes the feathers from the image, leaving a very pathetic looking naked and uncomfortable bird flying around in their mind's eye. After a while the higher functions of the brain take a look at that image and compare it to the context of what you were talking about around that bizarre phrase, and decides if you might actually mean something quite different from that unpleasant bird. But even with this correction, the first impression, which is the strongest emotionally, is of something "wrong".