Noun: nay
Sample Sentences
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I vote nay, even though the motion is popular, because I would rather be right than popular.
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Recently senators could fax in their yeas or nays to the committee chairman. [2009 January 6, “Still Broken After All These Years”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 26 Jan 2018:]
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The vote is 4 in favor and 20 opposed; the nays have it.
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And my povert' no wight nor can nor may
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Make comparison, it is no nay. [14th c, Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Clerk's Tale”, in D. Laing Purves, editor, The Canterbury Tales and Faerie Queene, with Other Poems of Chaucer and Spenser, published 1870, page 100:]
Nouns inflected like nay
soldier's woundwort,
Nicosian,
whopper,
greypate,
tactile sign language,
chronotrope,
Rosie Lee,
dissentient,
photoinactivator,
sulphonediimine,
coastal waterfall,
residuary devise,
bituminization,
nitrosonaphthol,
smṛiti,
geosphere,
backscreen,
mensuralist,
flocculate,
flocculant, etc. (List truncated at 20 nouns)
Etymology
1. 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.
2. The verb is from Middle English nayen (“to refuse, deny, gainsay”), from the interjection and adverb above. See: Middle English Nouns '
nai', Old Norse Nouns '
nei'.