nay

1. archaicdialectalnot comparableotherwise humorousNo.First known use 12th c.

   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

2. archaicdialectalnot comparableIntroducing a statement, without direct negation.First known use 14th c.

   Nay, what are you smiling at so damnably?

   1876, Henry James, Roderick Hudson

3. archaicnot comparableotherwise humorousOr rather, or should I say; moreover (introducing a stronger and more appropriate expression than the preceding one).First known use 16th c.

   His face was dirty, nay, filthy.

   4 more examples

   […] 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

1. archaicNo.

plural nays

1. A vote against.

   I vote nay, even though the motion is popular, because I would rather be right than popular.

   1 more example

   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

   Antonyms: aye, yea

2. A person who voted against.

   The vote is 4 in favor and 20 opposed; the nays have it.

3. archaicA denial; a refusal.

   And my povert' no wight nor can nor may 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

present singular third person nays · participle present naying · participle past nayed · past nayed

1. obsoleteTo refuse.

   the cardinall then being bishop of Winchester, tooke vpon him the state of cardinall, which was naied and denaied him, by the king of most noble memorie

   1577, Raphaell Holinshed, The Firste Volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande […], volume I, London: […] [Henry Bynneman] for Iohn Harrison, →OCLC

1. not comparableobsoleteNary; not any

   Nay man could have come out of such a situation unscathed.

   3 more examples

   'Tis easy to do this experiment, though nay substance will do: we shall need a special one.

   nay other Nations [beyond the Native American ones] seem to have continued in a State of Barbarism, as long as they continued to exercise one only of these Arts [Metallurgy and Agriculture] without the other;

   1761, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Second Part”, in A discourse upon the origin and foundation of the inequality among mankind, R. & J. Dodsley, page 120

   His house was so closely beset by the populace, day and night, that scarcely nay person ventured to visit him; and he was afraid that his chapel would be burned to the ground.

   1858, Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1ˢᵗ Baron Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second, volume III, London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts, page 347

1. abbreviationAbbreviation of Nayarit: a state of Mexico.

plural Nays

1. A surname.