anything but

English

Adverb

anything but (not comparable)

1. Not at all; quite the contrary (of).

   It wasn't cheap. Anything but.

   It started out as a lively party, now it is anything but.

   • 1887, Karl Marx, chapter 26, in Samuel Moore, Edward Aveling, transl., Das Kapital:

     As a matter of fact, the methods of primitive accumulation are anything but idyllic.

   • 1890, Henry Cuyler Bunner, The Nice People:

     "They certainly are nice people," I assented to my wife's observation, using the colloquial phrase with a consciousness that it was anything but "nice" English, "and I'll bet that their three children are better brought up than most of----"

   • 1893, Fridtjof Nansen, Otto Sinding (illustrator), William Archer (translator), Eskimo Life, Chapter II: Appearance and Dress,

     The pure-bred Eskimo would at first glance seem to most of us Europeans anything but beautiful.

Translations

not at all

• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 一點也不／一点也不 (yīdiǎn yě bù), 根本不 (gēnběn bù), 決不／决不 (zh) (juébù)

• Finnish: kaikkea muuta kuin
• French: tout sauf
• Italian: tutt'altro (it)
• Portuguese: tudo menos (corresponding to “anything but something”), tudo menos isso (corresponding to “anything but” at the end of a clause)
• Russian: что угодно, но не (što ugodno, no ne)
• Spanish: please add this translation if you can