Word.ws English Dictionary

why-not

why-not noun: a violent and peremptory procedure without any assigned reason; a sudden conclusive happening.

Noun

why-not

  1. (obsolete) A violent and peremptory procedure without any assigned reason; a sudden conclusive happening.
    • When the church / Was taken with a why-not in the lurch.1662 (indicated as 1663), [Samuel Butler], “[The First Part of Hudibras]”, in Hudibras. The First and Second Parts. […], London: […] John Martyn and Henry Herringman, […], published 1678; republished...
    • This game […] was like to have been lost with a why-not.1653, John Harington, A Briefe View of the State of the Church

Questions about why-not

What does why-not mean?
Why-not means a violent and peremptory procedure without any assigned reason; a sudden conclusive happening.
What part of speech is why-not?
Why-not is a noun.

Words near why-not in the dictionary

  1. why'd
  2. why'm
  3. why'n't
  4. why're
  5. why's
  6. why-not
  7. Whyalla
  8. Whyatt
  9. Whyatts
  10. Whybrew
  11. whych

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: why-not (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “why-not.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/why-not. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.