# ... Not!

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{{Short description|Grammatical construction in the English language}}
{{English grammar}}
{{use mdy dates|date=December 2018}}
{{For|other uses of the word|Not (disambiguation)}}
{{refimprove|date=January 2014}}
'''... Not!''' is a [grammatical construction](/source/grammatical_construction) in the [English language](/source/English_language) used as a [function word](/source/function_word) to make negative a group of words or a word.<ref>{{Cite web | url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/not |title = Definition of NOT}}</ref> It became a [sardonic](/source/sardonic) [catchphrase](/source/catchphrase) in North America and elsewhere in the 1990s. A [declarative statement](/source/Sentence_(linguistics)) is made, followed by a pause, and then an emphatic "not!" adverb is postfixed. The result is a surprise [negation](/source/negation_(linguistics)) of the original declarative statement.

According to the above, the phrase, "He is a nice guy... not!" is [synonymous](/source/synonymous) to "He is not a nice guy". Whereas the latter structure is a neutral observation, the former expresses rather an annoyance, and is most often used jocularly.

One of the earliest uses was in the ''[Princeton Tiger](/source/Princeton_Tiger)'' (March 30, 1893) 103: "An Historical Parallel-- Not." In 1905, it was used in the comic strip ''[Dream of the Rarebit Fiend](/source/Dream_of_the_Rarebit_Fiend)'' by [Winsor McCay](/source/Winsor_McCay). A 1918 instance was "I am darn sorry not to be able to help you out with the News Letter, but in me you have a fund of information—NOT."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Telluride|date=10 April 1918|title=Letter from W. D. Whitney, Yale Reserve Officers' Training Corps, New Haven, Conn., March 13, 1918.|url=https://www.tellurideassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/04_8_1918_April.pdf|journal=Telluride News Letter|volume=4|issue=8 |pages=12|access-date=27 June 2019}}</ref>

Popularized in North America in the 1990s by the ''[Saturday Night Live](/source/Saturday_Night_Live)'' sketch and subsequent film ''[Wayne's World](/source/Wayne's_World_(film)),''<ref>{{cite journal|author=Jesse T. Sheidlower|author2=Jonathan E. Lighter|title=A Recent Coinage (Not!)|journal=American Speech|volume=68|number=2|date=Summer 1993|pages=213–218|doi=10.2307/455678|jstor=455678}}</ref> "not" was selected as the 1992 [Word of the Year](/source/Word_of_the_Year) by the [American Dialect Society](/source/American_Dialect_Society).

The "Not!" catchphrase was the basis of a scene in the 2006 film ''[Borat](/source/Borat)'', in which a lecturer in humour attempted to explain the grammatical construction to [Borat Sagdiyev](/source/Borat_Sagdiyev) with limited success.

==See also==
*[Privative](/source/Privative), a particle that inverts the meaning of the word stem to which it is affixed.

==Notes==
{{reflist}}

==External links==
*[https://web.archive.org/web/20120112135806/http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxpostfi.html Postfix Not! in English]
*{{cite web |date=January 13, 1993 |url=http://www.americandialect.org/index.php/amerdial/1992_words_of_the_year/|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060615064316/http://www.americandialect.org/index.php/amerdial/1992_words_of_the_year/|url-status=dead|archive-date=June 15, 2006|publisher=American Dialect Society|title=1992 Words of the Year}}
*{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/08/magazine/on-language-not.html|title=On Language; Not!|date=March 8, 1992|last=Safire|first=William|author-link=William Safire|newspaper=The New York Times Magazine|page=20}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Not}}
Category:1990s slang
Category:English grammar
Category:Saturday Night Live catchphrases
Category:1890s quotations
Category:1992 quotations
Category:Quotations from television

{{Slang-stub}}

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [... Not!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..._Not!) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..._Not!?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.