Definition of "nay"

Nay, what are you smiling at so damnably?

1876, Henry James, Roderick Hudson

[…] And proved not only horse, but cows, / Nay pigs, were of the elder house: / For beasts, when man was but a piece / Of earth himself, did th' earth possess.

1663, Samuel Butler, Hudibras, part 1, canto 2

And even in our wildest and most wandering reveries, nay in our very dreams, we shall find, if we reflect, that the imagination ran not altogether at adventures,

1748, David Hume, chapter 18, in Enquiries concerning the human understanding and concerning the principles of moral, London: Oxford University Press, published 1973

And all rejected: Has this course been used? Arch. We grant it has not; but— King. Nay, give me leave,— I urge, from your own grant, it has not been. If then, in process of a petty sum, Both parties having not been fully heard, […]

2016 February 2, John Dryden, The works of John Dryden, Vol.7: Top English Literature (Top English Literature)‎, VM eBooks

And my povert' no wight nor can nor mayMake comparison, it is no nay.

14th c, Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Clerk's Tale”, in D. Laing Purves, editor, The Canterbury Tales and Faerie Queene, with Other Poems of Chaucer and Spenser‎, published 1870, page 100

the cardinall then being bishop of Winchester, tooke vpon him the state of cardinall, which was naied and denaied him, by the king of most noble memorie

1577, Raphaell Holinshed, The Firste Volume of the Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande […], volume I, London: […] [Henry Bynneman] for Iohn Harrison