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negative

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negative

  • /ˈnɛɡ.ə.tɪv/
  • [-ɾɪv]

Where it comes from

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

adjective more negative · most negative · -ve · −ve

  1. Not positive or neutral; bad; undesirable; unfavourable. The high exchange rate will have a negative effect on our profits.
  2. Of a number: less than zero.
  3. Less than zero degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit. I was out in negative weather today.
  4. Of a test result: not positive, not detected. negative detection of.
  5. Of electrical charge of an electron and related particles
  6. Denying a proposition; negating a concept. Marx had said that the negative freedom of the liberal bourgeois tradition would have no place in socialist society, as it only expressed the antagonistic character of society.
  7. often 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.
  8. Of or relating to a photographic image in which the colours of the original, and the relations of left and right, are reversed.
  9. Metalloidal, nonmetallic; contrasted with positive or basic. The nitro group is negative.
  10. New Age, derogatory, jargon Often preceded by emotion, energy, feeling, or thought: to be avoided, bad, difficult, disagreeable, painful, potentially damaging, unpleasant, unwanted. 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).
  11. Characterized by the presence of features which do not support a hypothesis.
  12. slang HIV negative. 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.
  13. slang COVID-19 negative.
  14. excessive No, not any, zero. The negative contact we get inside here [prison] is enough to make you even more bitter and further alienated from society and ourselves.

noun negatives · -ve · −ve

  1. Refusal or withholding of assents; prohibition, veto “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.
  2. An unfavorable point or characteristic.
  3. A right of veto. 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.
  4. An image in which dark areas represent light ones, and the converse.
  5. A word that indicates negation. "Why, she is one of those persons whom negatives seem invented to describe—I doubt whether she is worth one single bad quality."
  6. A negative quantity.
  7. 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. A statement that something didn’t happen or doesn’t exist. You can’t prove a negative.

verb negatives · negativing · negatived · -ve · −ve

  1. transitive To refuse; to veto. Poppy earnestly begged to be allowed to go with Jasmine on the roof, but this the good lady negatived with horror.
  2. transitive To contradict. "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. 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. "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."

interjection -ve · −ve

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

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