Not!

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For other uses in logic and mathematics, see Negation.

Not! is a grammatical construction in the English language expressing disagreement. 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."

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 (TV series), 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.

It was selected as the 1992 Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society.

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 no find you attractive anymore!... NOT!"