Job Discussion Forums

[buravirgil]

What part of speech is “no”? I thought it over for a while and concluded that it must be an interjection, even though it fails the Mad Libs test. (“The burglar bumped into the dresser and exclaimed, ‘_______, my toe!’ ” The last time someone filled in a blank like that with “no” was never.) At a generous estimate, I was only one-sixth correct—but, in my defense, “no” resists all ready grammatical categorization. It is not an interjection, except when it is. (“Oh, no, I missed the train.”) It is not a noun, except when it is. (“The nos have it.”) It is not an adjective, except when it is. (“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”) It is not an adverb, except when it is. (“I’m no clearer on this than I was when I began.”) Some linguists grant it the separate part-of-speech status of “sentence word,” because, as I noted, it can serve as a stand-alone sentence. Others consider it a particle—even though, as a rule, the point of particles is precisely that they can’t stand alone; they exist to affect the meaning of other words.

Such words—also called auto-antonyms, antagonyms, Janus words, and antiologies—can arise for different reasons. Some are just a special kind of homonym; what appears to be one word with two opposite meanings is really two different words with identical spellings and pronunciations. Thus “clip,” meaning “to attach together,” comes from the Anglo-Saxon clyppan, while “clip,” meaning “to cut off,” comes from the Old Norse klippa. Other contranyms arise when nouns becomes verbs. Sometime around 1200 A.D., dust turned into a verb and, as dust will do, went every which way: “to dust” can mean to remove dust, as from a bookshelf, or to add something dusty, as flour to a cake pan or snow to the streets of Brooklyn. Alternatively, a contranym can reverse meanings when it is used as a different part of speech. As a noun, “custom” refers to a behavior that is common to many people. As an adjective, it refers to something designed for just one person.

What Part of “No, Totally” Don’t You Understand?
BY KATHRYN SCHULZ(The New Yorker)

[rioux]

She says no when she means yes
And what she wants you know that I can't guess

-Dan Fogelberg

[plumpy nut]

The answer is easy. I looked it up online in Webster's. Yes and No are adverbs. That would make sense since both words describe past, present, future actions.

[scot47]

It depends. Do you have no understanding of grammatical function ?

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=A9mSs2u.zCRVgnoAYp9LBQx.;_ylu=X3oDMTE0MmJoa2hvBGNvbG8DaXIyBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDU1dJVUswMV8xBHNlYwNzcg--?qid=20080429183442AAvNeD6

[johnslat]

"You say 'Yes', I say 'No'. You say 'Stop' and I say 'Go, go, go'. Oh no. You say 'Goodbye' and I say 'Hello, hello, hello'. I don't know why you say 'Goodbye.' "

Regards,
John

[Lack]

We need to create a new part of speech and call it "badass," and then classify "no" as that part of speech.