- Nah means no.
- You can use it in the same way as answering a question, but remember that it is very casual. Using nah in formal situations can seem disrespectful.
Although it has become commonplace in informal communication using mobile phones and the Internet, “nah” has been used since at least the first half of the twentieth century.
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The Meaning of Nah
Nah – the unofficial version of the word no. It is often used in text messaging and writing on the Internet.
The first written use of nach can be dated back to 1920, when it probably originated as part of the eye dialect, a non-standard way of writing words to represent their pronunciation in different dialects. Nah is a pronunciation that occurs in several American dialects as well as Cockney English.
How to Use Nah
Nah, you cannot completely replace it with nothing. No cannot be an adverb or an adjective, but no – it’s just an adverb:
I love the Bob Marley song “Nah, woman, nope, cry.”
Sean asked me to go with him, but I said, “Nah, man, I can’t.”
When using nah in informal communication, such as texting, you must follow the capitalization rules you use for those messages. For example, it is not uncommon for text messages to use lowercase letters, even if you need to use uppercase ones. If you decide to use nah in formal communication, use the same rules as for no.
Examples
Nah, I didn’t throw out the garbage.
Do you think it was cool? Nah, dude, you don’t know what cool is.