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▼M.Hoshiさん：
>問題文 John is nothing ( ) kind to animals. [同志社大]
>正解 if not
ジョンは、動物に優しいのが一番のとりえだ。
nothing if not 〜なのが一番の取りえだ、とりわけ〜、どう見ても〜
以下、参考までに――
#The phrase "nothing if not. . ." is an expression (perhaps even an idiom) whose purpose, while couched in negatives, is actually positive: "John is nothing if not kind to animals" means "John is anything but unkind to animals" or "One thing John is for certain is he's kind to animals."
#It is correct. I wouldn't quite call it an idiom, but it is a bit of figurative language that you will run into from time to time.
#The sentence means, "John is kind to animals." His kindness to animals is such an essential part of his nature, that without this quality, he would cease to exist (hence the "nothing" in the sentence). Does that help?
#I went looking for a definition of this idiom, and only found this:
#be nothing if not generous/honest/thorough, etc.
#used to emphasize that someone or something is extremely generous/honest/thorough, etc:
#- He's nothing if not charming.
#It's hard to explain how this phrase works. I think Osea's and Pheas's explanations are good, but "cease to exist" seems a bit too strong. I think of it more like, "this characteristic is so essential to the person that there's nothing else that's significant to say about him," or "any description of this person amounts to nothing if you leave out this feature."
#This may seem to imply that the person is one dimensional or obsessed with that one characteristic, but that's not the intention of the phrase.
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