- N -
Nay
Amongst the rather quaint traditions which survive in Britain is this: In Parliament, instead of voting yes or no, the deputies vote "ay" (pronounced with the vowel of my) or "nay" (pronounced with the vowel of may). Whereas no is Old English, nay came into the language. It is one of the instances where both words survive, other examples being ditch and dike,shrub and scrub, shirt and skirt. Normally, you would expect one word to oust the other, as happened in the case of egg, where the Danish word survived, and in the case of path, where the Anglo-Saxon word survived. (cf. Crystal 2005: 74-5)
Negro
When I was a child, Negroes were called Negroes. That was then felt to be offensive, and the Negroes became Coloured. That was then felt to be offensive, and the Coloured became Black. That was then felt to be offensive, and then Black turned into Afro-Americans. This is now felt to be offensive, and the Afro-Americans are becoming African-Americans. I wonder what the next move will be. Perhaps they could become Negroes.
Never
In general, never means ‘not at any time'. In certain varieties of English, it can also be used to refer to a single event, however. (Bauer 2002: 106). This can be ambiguous. An English colleague once told me that a certain student “never showed up”, which I misunderstood as meaning that the student had not attended a single class, whereas the colleague just wanted to say that he had not come at all on that particular day.
9/11
If you quote dates and use numbers doing so, how do you do it? For example, if you were born on 29 August 1992, do you put it down like this “29/8/1992” or like this “8/29/1992”? It does not really matter in this case. The meaning is clear in either case: 29 can only be the day, so 8 must be the month. Not so if your birthday is on 9 August 1992. In this case, “9/8/1992” could be either 9 August 1992 or 8 September 1992. As there are different conventions, the first interpretation being generally accepted in Britain, the second in America, you are now sometimes asked not to use numbers for months but write out the name of the month. Recently, the American interpretation has come to worldwide attention in 9/11, which was in September, not in November. To make things even more complicated, in some areas, for example in the world of the computer, the year comes first.
Novice Like office, the word novice was originally constricted to the field of religion. A priest would read his daily office, a novice would be a new recruit in a monastery or nunnery. Today, these meanings only constitute a tiny part of the overall range of meaning of these words. They both stand for a particular development of the meaning of words, called extension or generalisation by etymologists. (Crystal 2007: 151)
Nope
Differences in intonation are often difficult to pin down, but they may be communicatively as important as the difference between, say, singular and plural. You can say No in many different ways, giving it many different meanings. Just one example is to say No with a middish pitch and then cut it short, to express that this is a rather categorical or clear no. In writing, this is sometimes represented as "Nope"! (cf. Matthews 2003: 88)
Not
Pronounced differently in America and England. In this case, American English kept the earlier pronunciation /A ù/ , which in British English changed to /�/ . (Jucker 2000: 61-2)
Nottingham Like Tottenham, Fulham, Birmingham, Grantham and many other place names, Nottingham end with –ham. It means ‘farm’. (Bragg, Melvin: The Adventure of English. The Biography of a Language. London: Sceptre, 2004: 6-7).
Now
Now does not always mean `now´. Besides being an adverb of time, it is also a discourse marker. Its main function is to structure discourse, marking a speaker's progression through a discourse which contains an ordered sequence: ‘They have an open classroom at Lansdon. Now there's a lot of mothers in that room are very upset about it´. It also often announces an opinion: ‘He was giving a spelling test. Now for me, if you're inviting parents to come and observe, you don't give a spelling test'. (cf. Gramley/Pätzold 1992: 236-7).
Number The word number holds a special place in the English lexicon: it is, as far as frequency of occurrence is concerned, in the top 100 the no. 1 word which is not of Germanic origin. It comes only at place 76, however. All the words before, words like have (24), how (48), word (30), you (8) or them (58) are of Germanic origin. The vast majority of these are Anglo-Saxon, but they (19), them (58) and their (49) are Scandinavian. No. 1 in the top 100, at least according to this count, is the. Bragg, Melvin: The Adventure of English. The Biography of a Language. London: Sceptre, 2004: 7)
