nay
ADV · English
Experimental / limited support
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The corpus records 3 senses of nay. Each sense below has its own Add to list, so you choose the one you mean.
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Experimental coverage — measured below Partial on the number of recorded words, definitions, translations, word forms and pronunciation. Treat entries as evidence to check; meanings may be incomplete.
English is Experimental in Words. Support is measured, not declared: a language reaches Partial only when every measure meets its threshold, and a measure that has not been taken does not count. The development corpus holds 60 source-backed words in English. What is shown may be incomplete, and pronunciation audio, generated forms and generated examples are not offered.
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Definition: No. From a source of medium confidence.
archaic · dialectal · not-comparable
No translation has been attempted for this sense.
- Duke Magnus, Duke Magnus, plight thee to me, I pray you still so freely; Say me not nay, but yes, yes! 1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume I, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 243:
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Definition: Introducing a statement, without direct negation. From a source of medium confidence.
archaic · dialectal · not-comparable
No translation has been attempted for this sense.
- Nay, what are you smiling at so damnably? 1876, Henry James, Roderick Hudson:
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Definition: Or rather, or should I say; moreover (introducing a stronger and more appropriate expression than the preceding one). From a source of medium confidence.
archaic · not-comparable
No translation has been attempted for this sense.
- His face was dirty, nay, filthy. Usage example — not an attested quotation.
- […] And proved not only horse, but cows, / Nay pigs, were of the elder house: / For beasts, when man was but a piece / Of earth himself, did th' earth possess. 1663, Samuel Butler, Hudibras, part 1, canto 2:
- And even in our wildest and most wandering reveries, nay in our very dreams, we shall find, if we reflect, that the imagination ran not altogether at adventures, 1748, David Hume, chapter 18, in Enquiries concerning the human understanding and concerning the principles of moral, London: Oxford University Press, published 1973:
- And all rejected: Has this course been used? Arch. We grant it has not; but— King. Nay, give me leave,— I urge, from your own grant, it has not been. If then, in process of a petty sum, Both parties having not been fully heard,[…] 2016 February 2, John Dryden, The works of John Dryden, Vol.7: Top English Literature (Top English Literature), VM eBooks:
- Earnestly bent upon fulfilling the weighty, nay solemn, responsibilities of his office at all hazard, even at the risk of so far neglecting his parliamentary duties as to appear upon the division-list less frequently than any of his colleagues, Sir John Pakington wore the wooden spoon at the whitebait dinner, though with an air of waggery — almost as a decoration. 1858, Charles Kent, The Derby Ministry: A Series of Cabinet Pictures, page 237:
No paradigm has been compiled for this word yet.
Etymology: From Middle English nai, nei, from Old Norse nei (“no”), contraction of ne (“not”) + ei (“ever”), itself from Proto-Germanic *nai (“never”), *nē (“not”). More at no. The verb is from Middle English nayen (“to refuse, deny, gainsay”), from the interjection and adverb above. From a source of medium confidence.
No related word is recorded for this word.