Perhaps, but would you really say "Hi, I'm wearing a shirt without stripes"? It's a completely artificial construct. Simply the fact that this hacker-news entr

Perhaps, but would you really say "Hi, I'm wearing a shirt without stripes"? It's a completely artificial construct. Simply the fact that this hacker-news entry is the #1 search result shows that real human people do not perform this search in significant quantity. But we can quantify that with data to backup the assumption [1][2]. When people want to buy a shirt without stripes, they do not describe the shirt by what it doesn't have. In fact, it's trivial to cherry pick a random selection of words that on the face of it sounds like something a human might search for, but it turns out never occurs in practice. Add to that the fact that the term is being searched without quotes [3], which results in the negation not actually being attached to anything. Do you go to a store to buy it along with your Pants Without Suspenders, Socks Without Animal Print, and other items defined purely by what they don't have? [1] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=%22white%20tshirt%22,%22shirt%20without%20stripes%22 https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=%22white%2... [2] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=%22plain%20shirt%22,shirt%20without%20stripes https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=%22plain%2... [3] https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=plain%20shirt,shirt%20without%20stripes https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=plain%20sh...