She didn't say "Oui," but she didn't say "Non"

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Mais oui, mon chéri!

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[Updated with input from Val Ivanhoe on Dec. 14, 2008; see comments #2 and #3.]

Isn't "oui" the French word for "yes"?

Most of the time, but not always. There is another , "Spanish-sounding" French word for "yes."

The Petit Robert French dictionary confirmed that "si" (not "oui") "is used to contradict a negative idea" that has just been expressed and gave this example from Victor Hugo:

"Ce n'est pas du poison?" ("This isn't poison!") -- "Si! C'est du poison!" ("But yes! It is poison!").

"Oui!" would be incorrect in this situation.

The Latin word "sic" (meaning "thus," "in this way") was the source for French "si" and words for "yes" in several other Romance (Latin-derived) languages: Spanish "sí" Catalan "si," Portuguese "sim," Gallego (Galician) "si," and Italian "si."  The Vallader Ladin dialect Swiss Romansh has the related word "schi" as well as the unrelated "hai." Other Romansh dialects have "gea," "gie," "ea," "hei" corresponding to Vallader "hai."

Some dialects of the Sardinian language use "emmo" or "emmu," from Latin "immo" ("indeed"), as cited on the www.vocabolariosardo.it Web site.

The Romanians borrowed "da" from their Slavic neighbors.

The Provenςal language of southern France has "oc" (which shares Latin "hoc." -- "this"-- as its root, with French "oui"). The medieval troubadours wrote their verses in "Langue d'oc" -- "The Language of oc," as opposed to the "Langue d'oil" in the north of France ("oil" was the medieval form of "oui").

"Sic" was one of the words the Romans used for "yes" (as was "immo," which persists in Sardinia). Alternates were "ita" ("so," "thus," "in this fashion"), "ita est" ("it is so"), "certe" ("certainly," "assuredly"), etiam "certainly"), "vero" ("in truth," "really," "indeed"), and even "ita vero." In "Cassell's New Latin Dictionary," however, D.P. Simpson noted that "yes" was "more often rendered by repetition of the same word in the question," as in this example:

"Venisne?" ("Will you come?") -- "Veniam!" ("I will come!")

The relative weakness of the other forms accounts in part for the variety of words for "yes" in the modern Romance languages.

As for our English word "yes" itself, Walter W. Skeat (in his Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language) wrote it is "a strengthened form" of "yea," "often accompanied by an oath in our early writers." Eric Partridge (in "A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English") said that "yea" is an archaic form of "yes," which comes from Middle English "ye/ya" from Old English "gea/ge" (pronounced approximately as "yea"). Related forms in other Germanic languages include the extinct Gothic "ja/jai" and "ja" in modern Dutch, German, Swedish, Danish and Icelandic. More distantly related is Greek "e" ("truly").

"Yea" became "yes" when the Old English expression "gea swa" ("yea so") contracted to "gease" and eventually "gese" (the "g" before "e" was pronounced "y"). The Oxford English Dictionary cites the first appearance of "yes" (spelled "gyse") in the text of Aelfric's "Homilies," written in about 1000 A.D. By Chaucer's time, "gese" had evolved into "yes" and "yis."

"Aye," a synonym for "yes," probably derives from "ay" or has remained as "aye" (which originally meant "always"). This use of "always" for "yes" is the same as the colloquial American terms "sure," "right," and "you bet." The most likely origin of "aye" is Old Norse "ei" (source of Middle English "ai/ei").

"OK" is Americans' near-equivalent of "yes." In NTC's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions, Richard A. Spears wrote that OK might be "originally from a 'jocular 'oll correct,'" but no one really knows its origins." Eric Partridge, however, in A Dictionary of Slang and Conventional English, gave two other theories of origin: a Western United States err or for "order recorded" and the Choctaw Indian word "oke" or "hoke," meaning "it is so." Partridge traced the word back to the 1880s.

According to the New Dictionary of American Slang (edited by Robert L. Chapman), "yep" is an American form of the popular "yeah" that dates from the early 1800s. The "p" is there to close the mouth in order to finish the pronunciation of open-ended "yeah." "Nope" developed in the same way.