meaning in context - Is Wayne's World's (NOT) a modern invention?


Older users of this site may recall the 'Bill & Ted' 'Wayne's World' series of movies of the early 1990s. They were mindless but fairly amusing and their eponymous characters spoke in a unique vernacular, part-stoner, part-surfer, part-moronic generation MTVer. One of the features of this sub-language was the use of the word 'Not' usually written as (NOT), a convention which served to negate the content or validity of what had been said previously.


E.g.


"I think your wife is very attractive. (NOT)"

or


"I love your new hairstyle. (NOT)"

Does anyone know if this usage is a modern invention or whether there are antecedents in ancient or more recent languages which are similarly employed to, wittily or otherwise, invalidate previous statements spoken? I'm not necessarily looking for usages of 'not' itself, but any similar linguistic devices.



Answer



The Oxford English Dictionary includes this form of not as an interjection, writing:



colloq. [perhaps influenced by nit adv. (see J. T. Sheidlower and J. E. Lighter in Amer. Speech (1993) 68 213–8). In later use, popularized by Mike Myers and Dana Carvey in the ‘Wayne's World’ sketches on the NBC television programme Saturday Night Live from 1989, and especially by the spin-off film Wayne's World in 1992.] Used humorously following a statement to indicate that it should not be taken seriously (usually because the idea expressed is untrue or unlikely to happen), or sarcastically to negate a statement made immediately before.



There are actually uses of this in the 1800s:



[1860 ‘G. Eliot’ Mill on Floss III. vi. vi. 90 She would make a sweet, strange, troublesome, adorable wife to some man or other, but he would never have chosen her himself. Did she feel as he did? He hoped she did—not.]


1888 Cincinnati Times-Star 26 July 2/2 Of course ‘White Wings’ was mourned because he was hissed. Yes he did—not!!!


1893 Princeton Tiger 30 Mar. 103 An Historical Parallel—Not.



After these uses, Wayne's World popularized the phrase in the late 20th century.


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