Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adv. In no way; to no degree. Used to express negation, denial, refusal, or prohibition: I will not go. You may not have any.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- A word expressing negation, denial, refusal, or prohibition: as, I will not go; he shall not remain; will you answer? I will not. When not qualifies a verb, either individually or as the main word of a proposition, it now almost invariably follows the verb; but in forms compounded with auxiliaries, it follows the auxiliary, or the first of them: as, I think not: I do not think so; I should not have thought so. Except in elevated style, the use of not is now almost always accompanied by the use of an auxiliary: as, ‘I do not see it,’ for ‘I see it not.’ Not, spoken with emphasis, often stands for the negation of a whole sentence referred to: as, I hope not (that is, I hope that the state of things you describe does not exist).
- Shaven; shorn; close-cropped; smooth: as, a not head.
- To shave; shear; poll.
- A Middle English contraction of ne wot, know not. Also note.
Wiktionary
- adv. Negates the meaning of the modified verb.
- adv. To no degree
- conj. And not.
- interj. Used to indicate that the previous phrase was meant sarcastically or ironically.
- n. Unary logical function NOT, true if input is false, or a gate implementing that negation function.
GNU Webster's 1913
- Wot not; know not; knows not.
- adj. Shorn; shaven.
- adv. A word used to express negation, prohibition, denial, or refusal.
WordNet 3.0
- adv. negation of a word or group of words
Etymologies
- Middle English, alteration of naught, nought; see naught.
Examples
“So I make it a point not to be there..not to be in that spot.”
“If I'm really evil, might I not stand back and *not* heal a party member so that I can loot a "friend's" backpack?”
“Of course this email references AR4 emails, which are clearly not deleted, since they make up the vast majority of the hacked dump, so were clearly *not* deleted...”
“My biggest fear is not that I will not be able to retire until I am 70 — it is that I will be foced to take retirement get laid-off at 55 and *not* be able to work until I turn 70.”
“I'm also not into the vampire thing at all..not one bit.”
I'm Perfectly Happy with My Reading Habits, Even If You Aren't
“You stated above'' I do not sympathize with terrorists sounds like admission to me,,not denial!”
“Please note that the position of the Bush-Cheney cabal has been that anybody they detain is *not* a POW, but a, well, ... ah, ‘terrorist’, in a ..... well, not a war, except as they say itis.”
The Volokh Conspiracy » Lawyers, Treason, and Deception: A Response to Andrew McCarthy
“I will say, given the almost painful descriptive attempts at the island that Congressman Johnson was making, that regardless of whether he is currently on medication or not he should *not* be actively participating in any context of duty if that is an example of his reasoning and interrogative abilities.”
“Note also that in their press release they name Amazon as their "valuable customer for a long time" not us the readers and that's a main sticking point, for Macmillan readers *are not* the customers, while for Amazon they are and that's another essential reason to support Amazon btw.”
“In his speech last night, not only did Edwards * not* congratulate O (which was seriously unprofessional), but he kept banging on the fact that he has "backbone" -- a not very subtle hint that the "lover" O doesn't have the inner fire/willingness to fight.”
Edwards' New Strategy Against Obama: Who Can Best Deliver Change, A Lover Or A Fighter?
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘not’.
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The Universal Calculator
Obviates the need for other devices or calculations--it will have a button for everything, and it will solve everything.
qwerty keyboard, shift key, control, home, end, pause, log, sin, space, enter, plus, numb and 237 more...
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The Pain of Texting
Words that are a pain in the ass to type in on a numerical keypad on a cell phone because they have consecutive letters that share the same button:
2 - ABC
3 - DEF
4 - GHI...defcon, hi, no, attitude, xylophone, on, monday, monkey, mono, dig, back, babble and 212 more...
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3 Letter Words
A list of English words that are three letters long.
ace, act, ade, ado, add, ads, age, ago, ail, air, aim, all and 397 more...
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Words Heard Too Often In Songs
Words overused in modern pop music.
Also see ruzuzu's list: Words that should be heard in songs more often.love, heart, dance, dancefloor, down, take, want, night, fight, baby, like, ooooh and 135 more...
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Roots
act, aer, ambul, ami, amo, anim, ann, enn, arch, rcha, rchae, archi and 139 more...
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Expressions of disbelief or disagreement
bollocks, come off it, rubbish, as if, bullshit, guff, i don't believe it, are you mad, tosh, nonsense, garbage, bunkum and 51 more...
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recent
Friends, of, today, are, not, only, interested, molar, Whistles, armpit, stinks, spotted and 26 more...
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Things Yoda Says
rolig I appreciate your point, Ptero, and I think there are a lot of cases where "to not X" may mean something different from "not to X". In the example of not eating dinner, the two meanings are entirely different ("avoiding dinner" v. "having improper table manners"), but usually a much more subtle is involved: (1) "I told you not to say that!" is different from (2) "I told you to not say that!", where we can imagine that the speaker's original instructions in (1) were simply "do not say this but rather this" and in (2) were more specifically disuasive: "I know you want to say this (or usually would say this, or are expected to say this), but in this case you must not say this." I think this is the same kind of difference as with "I told you not to come" and "I told you to not come" – essentially, this is a difference in the degree of forcefulness of the negative command. Jan 17, 2009
pterodactyl Excuse me a moment while I mount my soapbox...
They don't mean the same thing. The first sounds like it's about fasting or dieting (avoiding dinner) -- the second sounds like it's about table etiquette (the manner in which you eat dinner).The placement of the word "not" makes a difference, yet this difference is almost universally ignored. Consider these two hypothetical titles of books:
I think they're both useful constructions, but I notice that there's a great taboo against the construction "to not". For example, we say "I told you not to come", even though we mean "I told you to not come".
Isn't this a shame? Such a useful distinction we could have available to us, and we throw it all away, just because we're afraid to split one lousy infinitive.
Jan 15, 2009
reesetee Wha.....?? Aug 14, 2008
skipvia Clear thinking from the political science department:
"I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate."
-Harold Laski, quoted in "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell.
Interesting how the meaning clouds up a bit each time "not" appears... Aug 14, 2008
oroboros Ton in reverse. Nov 2, 2007