Not!

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For other uses of the word, see Not.

Not! is a grammatical construction in the English language expressing disagreement that became a sarcastic catchphrase in North America in the 1990s. A declarative statement is made, followed by a pause and then an emphatic "Not!" is postfixed. The result is a negation of the original declarative statement. Popularized in North America in the 1990s by the Saturday Night Live skit and subsequent movie Wayne's World, it can be found earliest in print in an 1893 Princeton Tiger (March 30) 103: "An Historical Parallel-- Not." Most often used jocularly, but also be used to express annoyance, it was such a popular catch phrase that it was selected as the 1992 Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society.

Note that the use of a postfix "not" has been used in English since at least the time of Shakespeare (as in "I love thee not"); what is more recent is the addition of the pause between the original statement and the "not".

In the final episode of Adventures of Superman, in 1957, Jimmy Olsen asks Perry White if he should include his dream about having Superman-like powers in a news story the team is writing. White's answer:

"Definitely. NOT!"

Another example is an E. E. Cummings poem which begins:

pity this busy monster, manunkind,
not.

In the 2006 film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, a public speech coach tries to instruct Kazakh reporter Borat (played by Sacha Baron Cohen) how to tell a joke using "Not!" as an example. Borat, being unfamiliar with American culture, has trouble grasping the proper use of the phrase. He does use the term to humorous effect after his encounter with Pamela Anderson when he says "Pamela! I am not attracted to you anymore!... NOT!"

In the television series MASH, season 2 episode 2 (the "Five-O'Clock Charlie" episode, 1973), Frank Burns says "That strikes me funny... not" in reference to Hawkeye and Trapper's antics over an anti-aircraft gun.

Similar forms of postfix negation are found in other comedic contexts without using the word "Not". Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog invokes the phrase "... for me to poop on!" to negate a compliment that precedes it. (An example would be, "But seriously, you've been a great audience ... for me to poop on!")

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