entry
doesn't
/ˈdʌzənt/Third-person singular contraction of “does not”
From English, from Old English does (third-person singular present form of do) + English n't (contracted negative particle from not).
Word Ancestry
English speakers once preferred doth, as in “he doth protest,” but a Northumbrian form, does, gradually elbowed it aside in literary English during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Then not performed one of English’s favorite disappearing acts: it shrank into a clitic, the little attached particle now written ’nt. By the 1680s, playwrights were already writing doesn't, because dialogue onstage tends to expose how people actually talk rather than how grammarians wish they did. The result is a tiny grammatical time capsule: does carries the old verb “do,” while ’nt is the surviving audible shadow of not. Say “doesn’t” quickly and you are compressing centuries of English sound change into two syllables.
The Story
English speakers once preferred doth, as in “he doth protest,” but a Northumbrian form, does, gradually elbowed it aside in literary English during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Then not performed one of English’s favorite disappearing acts: it shrank into a clitic, the little attached particle now written ’nt. By the 1680s, playwrights were already writing doesn't, because dialogue onstage tends to expose how people actually talk rather than how grammarians wish they did. The result is a tiny grammatical time capsule: does carries the old verb “do,” while ’nt is the surviving audible shadow of not. Say “doesn’t” quickly and you are compressing centuries of English sound change into two syllables.
Kin & Kindred
From 'does'·third-person singular present form of do
Derived Terms
English words from this root
From 'n't'·contracted negative particle from not
Derived Terms
English words from this root