by no means
- 1Certainly not, or not at all: used to make a statement firmly negative, or on its own as an emphatic no.
The results are by no means final, and the committee will review them again next month.
By no means should you leave the stove on while you're out of the house.
Note
At the start of a clause it pulls the verb ahead of the subject, as other negative openers do: by no means am I suggesting, by no means should you leave. Inside a sentence it simply sits before what it denies, as in by no means final. Its opposite is by all means, the courteous yes.
Use it in a sentence
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Origin
Formed from by + no + means (“condition or instrument to achieve a result”).