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Qinkai Shen
Why should we use "no" rather than "not" in "But this was no ordinary girl"?
Hey guys, I was watching S1E1 of How I Met Your Mother and the lines go like this:
Ted: Girls don't ordinarily like that. But this was no ordinary girl.
I think we'd usually say "She was not an ordinary girl", so why and how to use "no" in circumstances like this? Thank you!
١١ يونيو ٢٠٢٠ ٢٣:٢٢
الإجابات · 7
4
We use "no" to negate a noun (including its determiners and adjectives), in this case, "no (ordinary) girl". This is perfectly correct; it is not slang.
We use "not" to negate a verb, so we could rewrite the sentence using "was not": "This was not an ordinary girl."
Both sentences have the same meaning; it's just a matter of style.
١٢ يونيو ٢٠٢٠
1
"She was no ordinary girl" is simply another way to say "She was not an ordinary girl." I respectfully disagree with Stephanie. It is not slang and is grammatically correct. It is simply a slightly more emphatic or dramatic way of saying something.
No + adjective + noun Examples:
The boxer had no worthy opponents = The boxer didn't have any worthy opponents.
The candidate had no strong supporters = The candidate did not have any strong supporters.
No + noun Examples:
She was no expert = She was not an expert.
There was no class on Monday = There wasn't a/any class on Monday.
You can also use this sentence structure as a form of insult:
He is no Einstein = He is not very smart.
She is no spring chicken = She is not young (idiom used mostly by older people)
١٢ يونيو ٢٠٢٠
"No ordinary" is a common usage; just now on Google a search for the exact phrase produced well over 7,000,000 matches. The Cambridge English Dictionary refers to it in its entry linked below.
This includes " Her last concert appearance in Britain was no ordinary (= a very special) performance."
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ordinary
And the Ngram Viewer shows that "no ordinary girl" is a little more popular than "not an ordinary girl" - see https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=+not+an+ordinary+girl%2Cno+ordinary+girl&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cnot%20an%20ordinary%20girl%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cno%20ordinary%20girl%3B%2Cc0
١٢ يونيو ٢٠٢٠
It was a slang usage. It was incorrect and meant to be a little funny in its incorrect-ness. It was laughing at one's self.
١١ يونيو ٢٠٢٠
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Qinkai Shen
المهارات اللغوية
الصينية (المندرية), الإنجليزية
لغة التعلّم
الإنجليزية
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