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"No," from Tom, ending the word with so decided a pressure of the lips that it sounded like "nope."
1890, Werner's Readings and Recitations, E.S. Werner, page 50:
“Aunt Kat? And was Aunt Kat your only relation? Have you no father nor mother?” “Nope. Never had none ‘cept Aunt Kat. Her hull name was Katrina. She wuz Dutch she wuz."
c.1930, The Detroit Educational Bulletin, Detroit (Michigan) Board of Education, page 13:
1: I will not dishonour my country's speech by leaving off the last syllables of words, 2: I will say a good American "yes" and "no" in place of an Indian grunt "um-hum" and "nup-um" or a foreign "ya" or "yeh" and "nope"[…]
2006, Charlotte Hudson Ewing, Red Land, AuthorHouse, →ISBN, page 54:
Nope. Don't know as I do.
Usage notes
The usage as a reply in the form of a single-word sentence has, since the 1850s, been far more common than any others.
1981, Tom Higgins, Practice quick...and swim, read in Dale Earnhardt: Rear View Mirror, Sports Publishing LLC, →ISBN (2001), p. 32
By one reporter's count, questions about the change elicited seven shakes of the head indicating no comment, five "yeps" and three "nopes" from Earnhardt.
(slang) An intensely undesirable thing, such as a circumstance or an animal, eliciting immediate repulsion without possibility of further consideration.
2016, Sam Plank, This Cemetery With A Haunted Playground Is A Casket Full Of Nope, Movie Pilot,
This cemetery with a haunted playground is a casket full of nope.
1613, Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion, read in The Complete Works of Michael Drayton, Now First Collected. With Introductions and Notes by Richard Hooper. Volume 2. Poly-olbion Elibron Classics (2005) , p. 146,
To Philomell the next, the Linnet we prefer;/And by that warbling bird, the Wood-Lark place we then, /The Reed-sparrow, the Nope, the Red-breast, and the Wren, /The Yellow-pate: which though she hurt the blooming tree, /Yet scarce hath any bird a finer pipe than she.
1823, Edward Moor, Suffolk Words and Phrases: or, An attempt to collect the lingual localisms of that county, R. Hunter, p. 255
I may note that olp, if pronounced ope, as it sometimes is, may be the origin of nope; an ope, and a nope, differ as little as possible.
1836, David Booth, An Analytical Dictionary of the English Language, in which the Words are Explained in the Order of Their Natural Affinity, Independent of Alphabetical Arrangement, page 380:
In Natural History, 'An Eye of Pheasants' was also 'A Nye of Pheasants', and even the human Eye was written a Nye. The Bulfinch was either a Nope, or an Ope ; the common Lizard, or Eft (Old English Evet) is also the Newt; the Water-Eft is the Water-Newt ; and the Saxon nedder, a serpent (probably allied to Nether, as crawling on the ground) has been transformed into an Adder.
1882, Abram Smythe Palmer, Folk-etymology: A Dictionary of Verbal Corruptions Or Words Perverted in Form Or Meaning, G. Bell and Sons, page 583:
Nope, an old name for the bullfinch used by Drayton (Wright), is a corrupt form for an ope, otherwise spelt aupe, olp, or alpe (Prompt.Parv.).
1823, Francis Grose, Pierce Egan, Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, Francis Grose, page xci:
(in an example of use of crackmans) The cull thought to have loped by breaking through the crackmans, but we fetched him back by a nope on the costard, which stopped his jaw.
1829, Joseph Hunter, The Hallamshire Glossary, W. Pickering, page 69:
I'll fetch thee a nope.
Verb
nope (third-person singular simple presentnopes, present participlenoping, simple past and past participlenoped)