Can not or cannot?

Can not or cannot?

Question:

I see lots of “can not” these days. I always thought it was “cannot”. Which is correct? Or do they mean different things?

Answer:

I’m always reluctant to speak of “correctness”, because the language is always changing. Cases like this are even worse. As for different meanings, it’s hard to think of multiple interpretations. But there is something unusual going on here: let’s investigate.

Much of the time, we use verbs in compound form. That is, there’s not just the main verb, but an auxiliary as well. For example, there’s a difference in meaning between “She eats fish and chips” and “She is eating fish and chips”. In less formal spoken language, where there is an auxiliary, we often contract it: “She’s eating fish and chips”.

When we negate the verb, things get a little more complex. We can insert “not” into the full form: “She is not eating fish and chips”. More often, we contract — but there are two ways of contracting: we can “weld” the auxiliary to the subject, keeping the negation as a separate word, as in “She’s not eating fish and chips”; or we can “weld” the negation to the auxiliary, as in “She isn’t eating fish and chips”. We have the choice of saying “She will not”, “She won’t”, or (less commonly) “She’ll not”. “She has not”, “She hasn’t”, or “She’s not”. And so on.

This choice is not available to us in all cases. We can (and do) say “I’m not…”, but we do not say “I amn’t…”. (I ain’t…” does the job, but it is generally regarded as sloppy if not vulgar.) Interestingly, “can” is another case where the option is not available. We can say “I can’t”, but not “Ic’n not” (or something). Even more interestingly — and here’s the questioner’s point — “can” seems to be the only auxiliary that is commonly “grafted on” to the negative even when it isn’t contracted. We often see “cannot”, but never “didnot”, “hadnot”, “isnot”, and so on. Why not? Moreover, if we have “did not”, “had not”, and “is not”, why should we be surprised to see “can not”?

So I’m far more inclined to ask: “Why (and when) did the form cannot emerge?” For there is no doubt that it did emerge, nor that it is still in common use. Anyway, to answer the question asked: there is absolutely no reason to consider the two-word form can not incorrect, and there’s no reason to assume that the two forms have different meanings. There is all the reason in the world to complain that our language is inconsistent, flighty, temperamental… but isn’t that why we love it?