The original negation marker in English was ne, as in French. The modern word ‘not’ started out as a full-bodied ne-a-wiht ‘not-ever-thing’, or in other words ‘nothing-whatsoever’. This phrase was added to the simple ‘no’, in order to create an emphatic ‘no way’, ‘not a jot’ type of ‘no’. By the tenth century, ne-a-wiht had already contracted to just nawiht, but it still retained its former meaning, so that a phrase like ic ne seo nawiht still meant ‘I not see nothing whatsoever’.
Later on, however, as this emphatic type of ‘no’ started being used more and more often, attrition set in. In form, nawiht was reduced to nawt, and alongside this erosion of sounds, there was also an inflationary weakening of meaning. By the thirteenth century, a manual for female recluses called the Ancrene Wisse (‘Guide for Anchoresses’) already uses the formerly emphatic combination ne … nawt in nearly half of all ‘no’ statements, thus showing that ne … nawt was no longer as emphatic as it had once been. And later on, the ne … nawt combination became even more common, so that I ne see nawt lost all pretence of emphasis, and came to mean just ‘I don’t see’. Together with this attrition in meaning, the form nawt (sometimes also spelt nowt or nought) was eroded further to not, and to cap it all, the original negation marker ne started being dropped from the pair, to leave only I see not. ‘Not’ is thus a prime example of both material and social decline. It started as a paunchy ne-a-wiht ‘nothing whatsoever’, a word rich in length and weighty in meaning, but its form was reduced to not (or even just n’t), and its meaning eroded to the plainest of no’s.
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robot19 июля 2024