"yeah"

[Charles Doyle]

It's clear to me that "nay" comes from the contraction of "no way."

--Charlie
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>
>On 10/17/07, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Isn't "nay" a borrowing from the Danish dialect of Old Norse? "Nay (,Jim)" in place of "no" or "naw" in the Saint Louis of my youth, but I doubt that the history of its use is any more interesting than the history of "it matters not," always used in place of "it doesn't matter" or "I don't care." My WAG is that both usages stem from movies and stories about the days of knights.

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