In recent days,I found myself not knowing the word"not" at all,and this really makes many misunderstanding for me. Therefore, there are two questions about "not".
Emma:You must be happy that you didn't fail your important exam yesterday.
Anna: Absolutely……not. The fact is that I'm "very happy" not just "happy".
One of the most common definition of "not" in my dictionary is "used in order to make a word or expression have tge opposite meaning".
Thus,one question is "Can I use the word "not" like the sentence Anna says?". In other words, can I use the word "not" to emphasize the difference of the degree rather than the opposite meaning?
The another is ,Why does "not a bit" mean "little" and "not a little" mean "much"? Are they idioms?
After all,"a little" and "a bit" are the similar phrase to mean "some".