Why "-n" is commonly used for dry-run?

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Well known commands like make, rsync, and, git use -n option for dry-run.
What does -n stand for in this context?

conventions command naming-conventions
1 Answers

My guess is that it's because dry-run contains the letter n and because d and r are already used:

$ make --help | grep '^ *-[dr]'
  -d                          Print lots of debugging information.
  -r, --no-builtin-rules      Disable the built-in implicit rules.
$ rsync --help | grep '^ *-[dr]'
 -r, --recursive             recurse into directories
 -d, --dirs                  transfer directories without recursing
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