DictionaryAI

isn't

IZ-uhnt/ˈɪz.n̩t/

Noun pluralisn'ts

2 meanings of isn't

Practice

  1. 1
    verbabbreviationcontraction
    Contraction of is not.

    The museum isn't open on Mondays.

    He isn't sure whether the meeting was moved.

    Note

    This contraction travels as one word, built from is and the clipped -n't. In questions it moves ahead of the subject whole (Isn't she coming?), while the full form splits apart: Is she not coming? It is also the natural ending for a statement that asks for agreement, as in Nice day, isn't it?, where is it not would sound stilted.

  2. 2
    nounnonstandardcountable
    Something or someone defined by lacking the quality under discussion rather than possessing it.

    Among genuine leather goods, that bag is an isn't, whatever the label claims.

    The talent scout filed most of the auditions under hopefuls and outright isn'ts.

    Note

    A playful noun made by turning a string of denials into a thing. Bret Stephens, writing in The New York Times in 2020, summed up Joe Biden's chief recommendations as "a succession of 'isn'ts'": he isn't Trump, he isn't Sanders, he isn't angry. It is nonstandard, so it suits columns and conversation, not formal prose. Quotation marks flag it as a coinage, and the plural keeps the apostrophe: isn'ts.

Use it in a sentence

Write your own sentence with isn't, and AI will tell you whether it fits and which meaning you used.

Origin

Formed from "is" combined with the contracted negative ending "-n't".