don't

Wikipedia

See also dont, and dönt

English

Etymology

do +‎ -n't

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA: /dəʊnt/, SAMPA: /d@Unt/
• (US) IPA: /doʊnt/, SAMPA: /doUnt/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -əʊnt

Contraction

don't

1. Contraction of do not.
   • The Police, "Don't Stand So Close to Me", Zenyatta Mondatta, A&M Records:

     Don't Stand, Don't stand so, Don't stand so close to me.

2. (nonstandard) Contraction of does not.
   • 1971, Carol King, “So Far Away”, Tapestry, Ode Records:

     I sure hope the road don’t come to own me.

   • 2000, Eminem, “Stan” (song), in The Marshall Mathers LP (album): 

     My girlfriend's jealous 'cause I talk about you twenty-four seven / But she don't know you like I know you, Slim, no one does / She don't know what it was like for people like us growing up / You gotta call me man, I'll be the biggest fan you'll ever lose

3. (African American Vernacular) Used before an emphatic negative subject.

   Don’t nobody care.

Translations

do not

Albanian: mos (sq) Arabic: لا (ar) (laa) (+ jussive of the verb) Belarusian: не (be) (ne) Bulgarian: не (bg) (ne) Burmese: မ (my) (mă) verb နဲ့ (my) (nè.) Chinese: Mandarin: 不要 (zh) (bùyào), 別 (zh), 别 (zh) (bié), 別介 (zh), 别介 (zh) (biéjiè), 不 (zh) (bù) Czech: ne (cs) Esperanto: ne (eo) + jussive Finnish: älä sg., älkää pl. French: ne... verb ...pas Hindi: न (hi) (na), (less polite) मत (hi) (mat) Hungarian: ne (hu) Icelandic: ekki (is) + infinitive Irish: ná (ga) Japanese: terminal + な (ja) (na), (polite) ...ないでください (ja) (...naide kudasai) Korean: (-지 (ji) +) 말다 (ko) (malda)

Latin: noli + infinitive (singular), nolite + infinitive (plural) Macedonian: не (mk) (ne) Persian: نکن (fa) (nakon) Polish: nie (pl) Russian: не (ru) (ne) Scots: dinnae Serbo-Croatian: Cyrillic: не (sh) Roman: ne (sh) Slovak: ne (sk) Slovene: ne (sl) Spanish: no (es) Swedish: verb ...inte (sv) Thai: อย่า (th) (yàa)... Ukrainian: не (uk) (ne) Urdu: ـن (ur) (na-), (less polite) مت (ur) (mat) Vietnamese: đừng (vi)

Noun

don't (plural don'ts)

1. Something that must not be done (usually in the phrase dos and don’ts).

Derived terms

• dos and don'ts, do's and dont's

See also

• doesn't