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Glite Dictionary
🙅 Strong denial ❌ Negative past
did not

did not

1.0
To say that something failed to happen or was not done in the past
  • phrasal verb
translation icon : no + verbo en pasado
  • We did not receive your email until this morning.

Examples

  • They did not expect the weather to change so suddenly.

  • Sarah did not agree.

  • He did not attend the meeting because he was feeling unwell.

  • He did not come.

  • He did not attend the meeting because he was feeling unwell.

  • They did not expect the weather to change so suddenly.

  • We did not receive your email until this morning.

Surface Forms

did not past

Morphology

do + not

The meaning is a straightforward negative construction: past auxiliary (did) + not yields denial, so a learner who knows 'do/did' and 'not' can derive that it denies or contradicts a statement. This is a regular grammatical composition (often used as an emphatic short reply) and is cross-linguistically common, not idiomatic.

Etymology

The phrase did not comes from using the past form of the helper verb did plus not to stop an action. Imagine did as a small helper that stands before the main verb and not as a stop sign that blocks it, so did not means 'didn't happen'.