1. not? (rhetorical/interrogative negation) — Strengthened form of ou used in rhetorical questions expecting an affirmative answer ('is it not so?', 'do you not know?') and emphatic negations. Spanish '¿no' and 'no' serve both interrogative and declarative negation. Hindi 'क्या-नहीं' (is-it-not?) marks the interrogative force explicitly. Arabic 'أَلَيْسَ/أَلَيسَ' (is-it-not?) is a dedicated rhetorical interrogative form, while 'كَلَّا' (certainly not!) and 'لَيْسَ' (it-is-not) serve emphatic denial. Korean '아니냐' (is-it-not?) and '않았느냐' (did-not?) both encode the rhetorical question. Swahili 'si/je' (not/question-marker) pair for questions, while 'hapana' serves standalone denial. S73623 with 'not-also' is a compound usage of the same interrogative particle. All three clusters represent the single emphatic interrogative negation particle across 53 occurrences, differing only in syntactic context. 53×
AR["أَ-لَيْسَ","أَلا","أَلَا","أَلَيسَ","أَلَيسَت","أَلَيْسَ","أَلَيْسَتْ"]·ben["Οὐχὶ-না-কি","কি-না","নয়-কি","না","না-কি","নাকি"]·DE["nicht"]·EN["Not","Was-not","not","was-it-not-necessary"]·FR["est-ce-que"]·heb["הֲ-לֹא","הֲלֹא"]·HI["क्य-न","क्य-नहिन","क्यअ-नहिन","क्या-नहीं"]·ID["Bukankah","bukankah","tidak","tidakkah"]·IT["-"]·jav["Punapa-sanes","Punapa-sanès","menapa-mboten","menapa-sanès","punapa","punapa-boten","punapa-mboten","punapa-sanes"]·KO["~아니냐","~아닌가","~아닙니까","~않겠느냐","아니","아니냐","아닌가","않겠느냐"]·PT["Não","não"]·RU["Не","не","разве-не"]·ES["No","acaso-no","no","¿No","¿no"]·SW["Huyu-si","Si","dinari","hata-","je","si"]·TR["-mi","Değil-mi","Değil-miydi","değil-mi","değil-miydi"]·urd["دونوں","نہیں","کیا-نہیں"]
Matt 5:46, Matt 5:47, Matt 6:25, Matt 10:29, Matt 12:11, Matt 13:27, Matt 13:56, Matt 18:12, Matt 20:13, Luke 1:60, Luke 4:22, Luke 6:39 (+38 more)
Senses
BDB / Lexicon Reference
Included with: οὐ, the negative of fact and statement, as μή of will and thought; οὐ denies, μή rejects; οὐ is absolute, μή relative; οὐ objective, μή subjective. —The same differences hold for all compounds of οὐ and μή, and some examples of οὐδέ and οὐδείς are included below.—As to the Form, see infr. G. USAGRefs 5th c.BC+ __I as the negative of single words, __II as the negative of the…