Reconstruction:Proto-Germanic/ne

Etymology
From.

Particle

 * 1) not

Usage notes

 * This word was a general negation particle, and always preceded the word that it negated. If a verb with an adverbial prefix needed to be negated, the word was normally inserted between the prefix and the main verb stem.

Descendants
This word does not survive in its original use in any modern language. Over time it usually became strengthened by other words, creating phrases such as "never", "not at all" or "not a thing". Eventually these phrases became the normal way of negating phrases, and this word fell into disuse. See Jespersen's Cycle on Wikipedia for more.