name · noun · particle · verb · 7 senses · updated from the 2026-07-25 local source snapshot
Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.
Sound
Pronunciation
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Received-Pronunciation:/nəʊp/
General-American:/noʊp/
General-American:[noʊp̚]
Australia:Recorded audio is listed in the source snapshot.
rhymes with -əʊp
/nəʊp/
CMU ARPABET:N OW1 P
Digits mark lexical stress: 1 primary, 2 secondary, 0 unstressed.
1
name
Meaning 1
Martha's Vineyard
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: archaic
Examples
1853, Sarah Sprague Jacobs, Nonantum and Natick, Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, p. 189, R. Gookin calls it Nope; other writers call it Capawack. It is the island known to us as Martha's Vineyard...As Mr Eliot's first convert, Waban, was, through life, a sober, upright man, so Hiacoomes, the first Christian Indian of Nope, always preserved an unspotted reputation.
1895, Boston Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Transactions, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, p. 187, Their story, as written by Daniel Gookin in 1674, is worth repeating: At the island of Nope, or Martha's Vineyard, about the year 1649, one of the first ...
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
2
noun
Meaning 2
A negative reply, no.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: informal
Examples
I'll take that as a nope, then.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
3
noun
Meaning 3
An intensely undesirable thing, such as a circumstance or an animal, eliciting immediate repulsion without possibility of further consideration.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: slang
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
4
noun
Meaning 4
A bullfinch.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: archaic
Qualifier: except near Staffordshire
Examples
1613, Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, read in The Complete Works of Michael Drayton, Now First Collected. With Introductions and Notes by Richard Hooper. Volume 2. Poly-olbion Elibron Classics (2005) [facsimile of John Russell Smith (1876 ed)], p. 146, To Philomell the next, the Linnet we prefer;/And by that warbling bird, the Wood-Lark place we then, /The Reed-sparrow, the Nope, the Red-breast, and the Wren, /The Yellow-pate: which though she hurt the blooming tree, /Yet scarce hath any bird a finer pipe than she.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
5
noun
Meaning 5
A blow to the head.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: East-Midlands, Northern-England
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
6
particle
Meaning 6
No.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: emphatic, informal, often
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
7
verb
Meaning 7
To hit someone on the head.
Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract
Usage: East-Midlands, Northern-England, archaic
No example sentence was provided for this meaning.
Meaning relationships
Synonyms: none provided
Antonyms: none provided
History
Etymology
From a Wampanoag name for the island (or perhaps just for Gay Head, as 1841 cite).
Representing no pronounced with the mouth snapped closed at the end. Luick instead claims it represents a realisation of no with final [ʔ], with a purported reduction of /p/ to [ʔ] before syllabic liquids providing a model for the spelling of [ʔ] as -pe, but it is more parsimonious to assume that the -pe directly represents attested realisations with [p̚]. Compare yep, welp, ope, and yup.
Probably a rebracketing of an ope (see 1823 quote), from alp (“bullfinch”).
Possibly influenced by nape and knap.
Across languages
Translations
25 source translations are retained for this English entry.
