negative

English

Alternative forms

• −ve (abbreviation)

Etymology

From Middle English negative, negatif, from Old French negatif, from Latin negātīvus (“that denies, negative”), from negāre (“to deny”); see negate.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈnɛɡətɪv/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈnɛɡətɪv/, /-ɾɪv/

• Audio (GA)

  (file)

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (Canada) IPA^(key): /ˈnɛ(e)ɡəˌɾɪv/
• Hyphenation: neg‧a‧tive

Adjective

negative (comparative more negative, superlative most negative)

1. Not positive nor neutral.
   • 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XXIII, in Francesca Carrara. , volume III, London: Richard Bentley, , (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 191:

     "Why, she is one of those persons whom negatives seem invented to describe—I doubt whether she is worth one single bad quality."

2. (physics) Of electrical charge of an electron and related particles
3. (mathematics) Of a number: less than zero

   Antonym: nonnegative

   1. (weather) Less than zero degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit.

      I was out in negative weather today.

4. (linguistics, logic) Denying a proposition.

   Antonym: affirmative

5. Damaging; undesirable; unfavourable.

   The high exchange rate will have a negative effect on our profits.

   Customers didn’t like it: feedback was mostly negative.

6. (often used pejoratively) Pessimistic; not tending to see the bright side of things.

   I don’t like to hang around him very much because he can be so negative about his petty problems.

7. Of or relating to a photographic image in which the colours of the original, and the relations of left and right, are reversed.
8. (chemistry) Metalloidal, nonmetallic; contrasted with positive or basic.

   The nitro group is negative.

9. (New Age jargon, derogatory) Often preceded by emotion, energy, feeling, or thought: to be avoided, bad, difficult, disagreeable, painful, potentially damaging, unpleasant, unwanted.
   • 2009, Christopher Johns, Becoming a Reflective Practitioner, John Wiley & Sons, page 15:

     Negative feelings can be worked through and their energy converted into positive energy... In crisis, normal patterns of self-organization fail, resulting in anxiety (negative energy).

   • 2011, Joe Vitale, The Key: the missing secret for attracting anything you want, Body, Mind & Spirit,

     The threat of negative feelings may seem very real, but they are nothing more than mirages... Allow the unwanted feelings to evaporate and dissolve as the mirages that they are.

   • 2011, Anne Jones, Healing Negative Energies, Hachette, page 118:

     If you have been badly affected by negative energy a salt bath is wonderful for clearing and cleansing yourself... Salt attracts negative energy and will draw it away from you.

10. Characterized by the presence of features which do not support a hypothesis.
11. (slang) HIV negative.
    • quoted in 2013, William I. Johnston, HIV-Negative: How the Uninfected Are Affected by AIDS (page 145)

      We certainly told him at that time that I was negative. We talked about transmission. We told him we don't do anything that would cause me to become positive.

12. (slang) COVID-19 negative.
13. (hyperbolic) No, not any, zero.
    • 1982 August 14, Renee Holmes, “Personal advertisement”, in Gay Community News, volume 10, number 5, page 15:

      The negative contact we get inside here [prison] is enough to make you even more bitter and further alienated from society and ourselves.

    • 2002 September 7, Jef, “MST3K DVD Collection One”, in rec.arts.tv.mst3k.misc‎ (Usenet):

      The hell? I wish I could follow you on that, but it makes negative sense.

Synonyms

• (damaging): undesirable

Antonyms

• positive

Derived terms

Related terms

Translations

Noun

negative (plural negatives)

1. Refusal or withholding of assents; prohibition, veto
   • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volumes (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A Millar, , →OCLC:

     “Upon my word, I can’t eat a morsel,” answered the lady […] There is indeed in perfect beauty a power which none almost can withstand; for my landlady, though she was not pleased at the negative given to the supper, declared she had never seen so lovely a creature.

   • 1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “ch. XV, Practical — Devotional”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book II (The Ancient Monk):

     Geoffrey Riddell Bishop of Ely […] made a request of him for timber from his woods towards certain edifices going on at Glemsford. The Abbot, a great builder himself, disliked the request; could not however give it a negative.

2. An unfavorable point or characteristic.
3. (law) A right of veto.
   • 1787, Luther Martin, cited in The Constitutional Convention Of 1787: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia Of America's Founding (2005), Volume 1, page 391

     And as to the Constitutionality of laws, that point will come before the Judges in their proper official character. In this character they have a negative on the laws.

   • 1788, Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist, no. 68

     The qualified negative of the President differs widely from this absolute negative of the British sovereign;

   • 1983, INS v. Chadha, Opinion of the Court

     In the convention there does not seem to have been much diversity of opinion on the subject of the propriety of giving to the president a negative on the laws.

4. (photography) An image in which dark areas represent light ones, and the converse.
5. (grammar) A word that indicates negation.
6. (mathematics) A negative quantity.
7. (weightlifting) A repetition performed with a weight in which the muscle begins at maximum contraction and is slowly extended; a movement performed using only the eccentric phase of muscle movement.
8. The negative plate of a voltaic or electrolytic cell.
9. (logic) A statement that something didn’t happen or doesn’t exist.

   You can’t prove a negative.

Derived terms

Translations

Verb

negative (third-person singular simple present negatives, present participle negativing, simple past and past participle negatived)

1. (transitive) To refuse; to veto.
   • 1887, L. T. Meade, chapter XVIII, in The Palace Beautiful: A Story for Girls‎:

     Poppy earnestly begged to be allowed to go with Jasmine on the roof, but this the good lady negatived with horror.

   • 1924, Herman Melville, chapter 12, in Billy Budd‎, London: Constable & Co.:

     And being of warm blood he had not the phlegm tacitly to negative any proposition by unresponsive inaction.

2. (transitive) To contradict.
   • 1892, Thomas Hardy, chapter XXXIII, in Tess of the d'Urbervilles‎:

     "A comely maid, that," said the other.
     "True, comely enough. But unless I make a great mistake—" And he negatived the remainder of the definition forthwith.

3. (transitive) To disprove.
   • 1882, J. H. Riddell, “Old Mrs Jones”, in The Collected Ghost Stories of Mrs. J. H. Riddell‎, Dover, published 1977, page 192:

     At one time an idea got abroad that the whole tale of her fortune had been a myth; […] but the boastings of various servants who declared they had seen her with “rolls on rolls” of banknotes […] negatived the truth of this statement.

4. (transitive) To make ineffective; to neutralize, to negate.
   • 1918 May 9, Lytton Strachey, “[Florence Nightingale.] Chapter III”, in Eminent Victorians: Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Arnold, General Gordon (Library of English Literature; LEL 11347), London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC, page 162:

     "The War Office," said Miss Nightingale, "is a very slow office, an enormously expensive office, and one in which the Minister's intentions can be entirely negatived by all his sub-departments, and those of each of the sub-departments by every other."

   • 1945 March and April, T. F. Cameron, “New Works Procedure”, in Railway Magazine, page 71:

     In the nature of things, much railway capital expenditure on stations and depots was in the immediate vicinity, if not in the heart, of towns, and extensions or remodellings, apart from being extremely costly, may be entirely negatived by the impossibility of securing the necessary land.

   • 1959, Flavius Josephus, chapter 5, in G. A. Williamson, transl., The Jewish War, Penguin, published 1970, page 98:

     Yet he made his largesse daily more lavish, as he saw the king negativing his efforts by taking care of the orphans and showing his remorse for the murder of his sons by his tenderness towards their little ones.

   • 1963 January, G. Freeman Allen, “Why B.R. are dropping high-power diesel-hydraulics”, in Modern Railways, page 25:

     While the diesel-hydraulic system has been failing to live up to its early promise, development in other directions has negatived some of the advantages which prompted its trial.

Derived terms

• negativation

Interjection

negative

1. (law, signalling) No; nay.
   • 1980, Richard Louis Newmann, Siege of Orbitor, page xxiv. 93:

     "Negative Marcel. No IOC. Patient has been drinking heavily, we can give him nothing for pain."

Antonyms

• affirmative

Anagrams

• agentive, gate vein, veganite

Albanian

Adjective

negative

1. inflection of negativ:
   1. feminine singular
   2. feminine plural

Danish

Adjective

negative

1. inflection of negativ:
   1. definite attributive positive degree/superlative degree
   2. plural

German

Pronunciation

• Audio

  (file)

Adjective

negative

1. inflection of negativ:
   1. strong/mixed nominative/accusative feminine singular
   2. strong nominative/accusative plural
   3. weak nominative all-gender singular
   4. weak accusative feminine/neuter singular

Italian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ne.ɡaˈti.ve/
• Rhymes: -ive
• Hyphenation: ne‧ga‧tì‧ve

Adjective

negative f pl

1. feminine plural of negativo

Noun

negative f

1. plural of negativa

Anagrams

• agentive, negatevi, vengiate

Latin

Pronunciation

• (Classical) IPA^(key): /ne.ɡaːˈtiː.u̯e/,
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): /ne.ɡaˈti.ve/,

Adjective

negātīve

1. vocative masculine singular of negātīvus

Norwegian Bokmål

Adjective

negative

1. inflection of negativ:
   1. definite singular
   2. plural

Norwegian Nynorsk

Adjective

negative

1. inflection of negativ:
   1. definite singular
   2. plural

Portuguese

Verb

negative

1. inflection of negativar:
   1. first/third-person singular present subjunctive
   2. third-person singular imperative

Swedish

Adjective

negative

1. definite natural masculine singular of negativ