Why does ‘less than’ mean ‘not’?

[scherz0]

[FONT=georgia]These esoteric quotations merely asseverate, but don’t teach, WHY ‘less than’ means ‘not’. Please explain in plain simple English? What semantic notions underlie ‘less than’ with ‘not’? All emboldenings are mine.

When Hamlet says that Claudius is less than kind, he is saying the following:
• Claudius is unkind for taking the throne from Hamlet, the former king’s son and rightful heir.
• Claudius is unkind, of a certain kind, an unnatural kind, because he has married the wife of a dead brother, which is considered incest in Shakespeare’s time and within the play.

A little more than kin and less than kind.
Hamlet’s language, like his costume, is strikingly different from the formal, ritualistic quality of the King’s speech; here, Hamlet is cynical, sarcastic. His pun suggest that he is closer in kin to Claudius than he would like to be, yet he does not believe Claudius feels kindly towards him. Notice that the pun would have worked as well if, instead of “kind” Hamlet had said “king.” He is still the Prince, not the King as he perhaps should have been through the law of primogeniture as the son of the Old King.

But in Hamlet’s line, there’s wordplay on not just ‘kin’ and ‘kind’, but on ‘kind’ itself, we might add. ‘Kind’ means both ‘generous’ and ‘type’: Hamlet is muttering under his breath that his uncle is not kind (i.e., generous) in addressing Hamlet as his son (because it reminds the prince that his real father is dead), as well as suggesting that his uncle is not of the same ‘kind’ or class as him.)

What Hamlet means is that although the King is now “more than kin” because he is kin both as uncle and as father, he is less than “kind.” “Kind” means “kindly,” “caring,” as it does now, but it also means “kind” as in our “kind of person.” In other words, Hamlet is saying that the King, though “more than kin,” is not kind, and not related to him at all, maybe even–as we might say–not even from the same planet.

[Flannel_Jesus]

Well, one can imagine kindness as a spectrum. On the far left hand side, at -10, you have complete cruelty. On the far right hand side, at 10, you have complete kindness. 0 is neutral, and 1 is the start of kindness.

If there’s this spectrum, then “less than kind” can mean “less than 1 on this spectrum”, which means he’s in the 0 to -10 range - he’s neutral or cruel.

This all isn’t literal of course, just a visual metaphor.

[PZR]

If something is less than something, it is something, but it is not that thing. It is not enough to be, it fails it.

Good. Less than good. If less than good, than not enough to be good. So not good. Something, whatever, but not good.

Fails the conditions for.

It’s rhetorically elegant because it allows the devil every single thing except that last step to being. Less than perfect.

If you say simply not something, it might allow space for debate of what constitutes it being or not being that, etc. Less than implies a discrete, concrete line, a specific metric.