-- not!

[George Thompson]

We have batted about the practice of making a negative statement by making an affirmative statement and capping it with an emphatic " -- not!"  I don't recall where we left it, and don't know how to find it in the archives.

So --

Here is at least a pretty early example:

It Was Some Opening -- Not.
Sporting News, April 17, 1913, p. 6, col. 4.  [Headline to a story: opening day games in some American Association cities were snowed out.]

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.