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539 Glossary for any unfamiliar terms

Negation | 737

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No

+ noun is not the same as not a + noun, unless the noun has a gradable

meaning:

A whale is 

not a fish.

(A whale is no fish.)

(fish is non-gradable: it is either a fish or not; it cannot be ‘more of a fish’ than

another animal)

When it comes to computers, er, I’m 

no expert.

(gradable: one person can be more of an expert than another person)

He’s 

no fool, is he?

No

is also a degree adverb. It premodifies comparative adjectives, adverbs and

determiners:

The second performance was 

no better than the first.

She had been fishing 

no more than three or four times in her life.

There were 

no less than four hundred people in the audience.

Similar meanings can be conveyed with a negation of a verb + any:

The second performance was

n’t any better than the first.

In some fixed expressions, no negates a following noun, adjective or adverb:

It’s no good phoning Arthur, he won’t be at home yet.

(It’s not good phoning Arthur, …)

A: What’s that woman Nancy’s second name?

B: I have no idea.

It’s 

no use phoning. He won’t be there.

A: Could we change our dinner-date to Friday?

B: Yes. No problem.