I’m pop culture impaired. Where exactly did this come from?
I don’t know, but maybe we can trace it back by earliest cite. I heard it on How I Met Your Mother several years ago. I’ll see if I can track down the episode.
It comes from AAVE (African-American Vernacular English) aka Black English aka Ebonics, and can be cited at least to the early 1990s. It’s almost certainly older than that, and it probably does not have a clearly-defined origin.
Even figuring out exactly when it crossed into broader usage is going to be tough to pin down.
It sounds more like a Punch N Judy show than ebonics, to me. And that’s WAY older than 1990.
In American usage, it’s certainly an imitation of African-American usage, not Punch and Judy.
Incidentally,thisis what we’re talking about.
Then there’s this.
It’s a common accent here in Schenectady – a baby cat is a ki’in. And they’d say “I di’int go.”
All the people I’ve heard it were either of Italian or Polish descent.
That link is from 1999.
Linquists are no better predicting the future than anyone else.
In the Bronx when I was growing up we’d say di’int as well regardless of ethnicity. That kind of glottal stop is present in New York City accents in general. Water: whaw’uh, quarter: caw’uh, shuttle: shu’ul. It’s also present in some British dialects.
However, the phrase in question as cited in the OP isn’t just a simple glottal stop. There’s a particular emphasis on the first syllable: Oh no she DI’int, making it sound sassy. And it’s generally used for emphasis, to express the fact that what was done was extreme or surprising.
Wild guesses might be frowned upon in GQ … but this sounds like something that might have been popularized by early 1990s TV programs like Martin or In Living Color. Perhaps a movie from around the same time. Or perhaps it was in some stand-up comedian’s repetoire, and said comedian got on HBO or Showtime at some point.
It’s interesting that an expression like “You been here FOUR HOUR!” has a well-defined starting point (in the late John Pinnette’s stand-up routine), but some other expressions are harder to pin down.
Yeah, the silent “d” in “didn’t” is pretty much standard American diction. Most people probably aren’t aware that they aren’t pronouncing the “d” in that word. It’s not “dint”, but “di - nt”
Only the latest cite is from 1999. I think you missed the first cite given that indicates the pronunciation:
From: Enuma Olanrewaju Ogunyemi
Subject: Re: Black labels
Date: 1993/09/07
Message-ID: <26irmb$gu9 at senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>
Newsgroup: alt.rap
Again you are being unnecessarily rude. BTW a lot of English folk
don't think Americans speak proper English, so using statements like
"Webster and the rest of reasonable (no you di'int!!) society"
doesn't mean much outside the U.S.
-------------
Totally agree on the comment about played out. That posting is from 2004.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a show like Martin (which has it’s own good example of glottalization ) that popularized it.
I don’t think that’s right. Most people do actually pronounce the d in didn’t. Common American diction has lots of T-glottalization, but I don’t think it extends to “didn’t”.
It might be noted that the full expression generally includes afinger-wag. Or several of them ending in a snap.
Maybe (although I pronounce it when I’m speaking standard American rather than my native Bronxese), but the glottal stop if present is not as distinct as it is in a New York accent, and it is deliberately exaggerated in the phrase in question.
Do I correctly understand that you are not merely asking about the word “didn’t” being pronounced with the second d elided, but, instead, about an entire phrase, “Oh no she di’nt”?
And it’s a catchphrase?
And I would have heard it before where, and when? 
** plays link ** **shrugs ** EDITED TO ADD: and in the link she’s saying “Oh no YOU di’nt”, btw /EDITED
Never heard it or heard of it outside this thread.
I spent about 75% of my teens in Massachusetts, 90% of my adult life in NC and VA and have spent weeks in MD, TX and CA. I doubt I have heard anyone say “dint” (di’int, whatever) more than about twice in 50 years, and that includes listening to plenty of Blacks as well as Whites. Maybe I just look like a grammar policeman outfitted to hunt bear and the potential wrongdoers are intimidated. Good. They need to be.
It’s a well known catch-phrase/meme. I’m not particularly up with popular culture and don’t watch much regular TV but I’ve heard it frequently. Any number of examples can be found with a Google search.
If you don’t watch a lot of TV you might have missed it.
We’re both wrong. I was referring to Ben Zimmer’s comment, which wasn’t from 1993. But his comment wasn’t from 1999 either; it was, as you said, from 2004.
But this whole thread contains people misunderstanding and talking past one another. The usage is certainly African-American. It doesn’t sound anything at all like regional accents, whether they have a glottal stop or not. From the next message in that thread:
And as the examples just on this page show, it’s both common and continues - albeit almost universally ironically - to this day.
I have always heard the “d” pronounced . . . except that, as usual, the tongue isn’t released before pronouncing the “n”. It’s subtly different from “di-nt”.