never

UK/ˈnɛv.ə/US/ˈnɛv.ɚ/

adverbA12 meanings One of the most common words in English · #27 of 15,258leans spoken

Never means not once, at no time at all. 'I have never been to Japan.' 'He never eats breakfast.'

Where it sits in the sentence is fixed: never goes before the main verb but after be and after any helper — she never calls, he is never late, I have never seen it. One negative is enough, so 'I never saw nothing' is not standard English. Between never and always sits hardly ever, for the things that happen once in a blue moon. Never carries real weight in short replies: never again, never mind, never say never. And 'well, I never' is old-fashioned surprise, said with the eyebrows up.

Definitions of never

1adverbneverAt no time; not once.A1~98%
“She has never once been late for a shift.”
2adverbstatementNot at all, used to make a statement stronger.B1~2%
“He never even said thank you.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 27 sentences found in the wild and placed 27 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

Phrases it lives in

never mind — do not worry about it; forget it
better late than never — arriving or acting late is better than not at all
never say never — do not rule something out completely

Where it comes from

Never is Old English nǣfre, and that is simply ne, 'not', glued to ever. A thousand years ago you said not-ever as two words; they fused, wore down through Middle English nevere, and English has kept them welded together ever since.

Middle English
nevere
English, today
never

From Middle English nevere. From Middle English nevere, navere, nævere, from Old English nǣfre (“never”), equivalent to ne + ever.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Time & Calendar

Practise this word

never in the wild

The film's title is a reference to Connery's reported declaration in 1971 that he would "never again" play that role.
Never Say Never Again
Although all of the IHA member colleges later became members of the Ivy League, there was never a time when they were all in the IHA at once.
Intercollegiate Hockey Association
Positive response: If a voter changes a preference, MR never switches the outcome against that voter.
May's theorem
In Euclid's Elements, two lines are said to be parallel if they never meet.
Playfair's axiom
Osborn argued that he had never been properly served with the order but still had to return the money.
Osborn v. Bank of the United States

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

From Project Gutenberg, public domain. These sentences are from real books, shown to illustrate the word at work.

Related words

Definitions of never

1adverbneverAt no time; not once.A1~98%

“She has never once been late for a shift.”

2adverbstatementNot at all, used to make a statement stronger.B1~2%

“He never even said thank you.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 27 sentences found in the wild and placed 27 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.