Talk:no such thing

Possible rewrite?
The part of speech, definition, and "possibly obsolete" tag listed here strike me as going against common usage. I've personally used the phrase and have been understood frequently enough to doubt the possibly obsolete tag. In addition, Merriam-Webster's page for the idiom gives several recent examples.

The issue seems to be that as an "interjection", it is still primarily a natural clipping of the phrase "there is no such thing" (+ variants), which means that the mentioned object/concept/etc. does not exist, rather than "on the contrary". In fact, this sense is demonstrated by (at least) the first four quotations, and the 2024 quotation on the linked Citations page, wherein the term is not even used alone. To clarify:

1823: Being "too generous"/"too wicked"

1833: The notion of a content merchant

1940: "Political truth of democracy"

1959: Quite probably the "essence of their society" (but I am less familiar with this source)

1982: This one is different. The author is clearly not stating that the notion of NYC as "Fun City" does not exist. In fact, the author is stating it still exists, and disagreeing that the notion has died. This could be a different sense at best and a misuse (assuming that the phrase does mean "on the contrary") at worst.

I could be wrong, but Collins and Cambridge seem to concur. Thoughts? I'm not sure how I'd rewrite the entry myself, and just removing the "possibly obsolete" tag and category would seem to lend credence to a potentially incorrect definition. User:BlueSkinnyJeans 00:51, 15 June 2024 (UTC)