Alternative forms

• -ve, −ve (abbreviation)

Etymology

From Middle EnglishCategory:English terms inherited from Middle English#NEGATIVECategory:English terms derived from Middle English#NEGATIVE negative, negatif, from Old FrenchCategory:English terms derived from Old French#NEGATIVE negatif, from LatinCategory:English terms derived from Latin#NEGATIVE negātīvus (“that denies, negative”), from negāre (“to deny”); see negate.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ˈnɛɡ.ə.tɪv/, (t-flapping) [-ɾɪv]Category:English 3-syllable words#NEGATIVECategory:English terms with IPA pronunciation#NEGATIVE

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

    Category:English terms with audio pronunciation#NEGATIVE
• Hyphenation: neg‧a‧tive

Adjective

negative (comparative more negative, superlative most negative)Category:English lemmas#NEGATIVECategory:English adjectives#NEGATIVECategory:English entries with incorrect language header#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with entries#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with 10 entries#NEGATIVE

1. Not positive or neutral; bad; undesirable; unfavourable.

   Synonyms: bad, undesirable; see also Thesaurus:bad

   Antonyms: positive, good; see also Thesaurus:good

   The high exchange rate will have a negative effect on our profits.Category:English terms with usage examples#NEGATIVE

   Customers didn’t like it: feedback was mostly negative.Category:English terms with usage examples#NEGATIVE

2. (mathematicsCategory:en:Mathematics#NEGATIVE) Of a number: less than zero.

   Antonyms: positive, nonnegative

   Hypernyms: nonzero, nonpositive

   1. (weatherCategory:en:Weather#NEGATIVE) Less than zero degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit.

      I was out in negative weather today.Category:English terms with usage examples#NEGATIVE

3. (medicineCategory:en:Medicine#NEGATIVE) Of a test result: not positive, not detected.

   negative detection of.Category:English terms with usage examples#NEGATIVE

4. (physicsCategory:en:Physics#NEGATIVE) Of electrical charge of an electron and related particles [from the 18th c.]
5. (linguisticsCategory:en:Linguistics#NEGATIVE, logicCategory:en:Logic#NEGATIVE) Denying a proposition; negating a concept.

   Synonym: negatory

   Antonyms: affirmative; intensifying, intensive, intensitive

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.Category:English terms with usage examples#NEGATIVE

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. (chemistryCategory:en:Chemistry#NEGATIVE) Metalloidal, nonmetallic; contrasted with positive or basic.

   The nitro group is negative.Category:English terms with usage examples#NEGATIVE

9. (New Age jargon, derogatoryCategory:English derogatory terms#NEGATIVE) 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).

     Category:English terms with quotations#NEGATIVE

   • 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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#NEGATIVE

10. Characterized by the presence of features which do not support a hypothesis.
11. (slangCategory:English slang#NEGATIVE) 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. (slangCategory:English slang#NEGATIVE) COVID-19 negative.
13. (hyperbolicCategory:English hyperboles#NEGATIVE) 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.

      Category:English terms with quotations#NEGATIVE

    • 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.

      Category:English terms with quotations#NEGATIVE

Noun

negative (plural negatives)Category:English lemmas#NEGATIVECategory:English nouns#NEGATIVECategory:English countable nouns#NEGATIVECategory:English entries with incorrect language header#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with entries#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with 10 entries#NEGATIVE

1. Refusal or withholding of assents; prohibition, veto [from 15th c.]
   • 1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] 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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#NEGATIVE

   • 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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#NEGATIVE

2. An unfavorable point or characteristic.
3. (lawCategory:en:Law#NEGATIVE) 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. (photographyCategory:en:Photography#NEGATIVE) An image in which dark areas represent light ones, and the converse. [from 19th c.]

   Antonym: positiveCategory:English links with manual fragments#NEGATIVE

   Coordinate term: diapositiveCategory:English links with manual fragments#NEGATIVE

5. (grammarCategory:en:Grammar#NEGATIVE) A word that indicates negation.
   • 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."

     Category:English terms with quotations#NEGATIVE

6. (mathematicsCategory:en:Mathematics#NEGATIVE) A negative quantity.
7. (weightliftingCategory:en:Weightlifting#NEGATIVE) 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. (logicCategory:en:Logic#NEGATIVE) A statement that something didn’t happen or doesn’t exist.

   You can’t prove a negative.Category:English terms with usage examples#NEGATIVE

Verb

negative (third-person singular simple present negatives, present participle negativing, simple past and past participle negatived)Category:English lemmas#NEGATIVECategory:English verbs#NEGATIVECategory:English entries with incorrect language header#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with entries#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with 10 entries#NEGATIVE

1. (transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#NEGATIVE) 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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#NEGATIVE

     Category:Quotation templates to be cleaned
   • 1913, Norman Lindsay, A Curate in Bohemia, Sydney: N.S.W. Bookstall Co., published 1932, page 64:

     "Never mind," said Cripps, "the dinner will set you right." The curate, foreboding the worst, followed them to the Sign of the Sixpence, where he had sufficient presence of mind to negative Cripps's order of steak-and-kidney pudding for three, and substitute a humble request for roast mutton.

     Category:English terms with quotations#NEGATIVE

   • 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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#NEGATIVE

2. (transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#NEGATIVE) 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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#NEGATIVE

     Category:Quotation templates to be cleaned
3. (transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#NEGATIVE) 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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#NEGATIVE

   • 1957, Sydney J. Bounds, The Robot Brains, London: Digit Books, page 62:

     "However, the fact that they need crystals negatives that idea...we must seek a material explanation."

     Category:English terms with quotations#NEGATIVE

4. (transitiveCategory:English transitive verbs#NEGATIVE) 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."

     Category:English terms with quotations#NEGATIVE

   • 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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#NEGATIVE

   • 1950, Norman Lindsay, Dust or Polish?, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, page 62:

     He was coatless and his thumbs were hooked negligently in a leather belt, thereby negativing a tendency to balance himself on an inclined plane backwards.

     Category:English terms with quotations#NEGATIVE

   • 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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#NEGATIVE

     Category:Quotation templates to be cleaned
   • 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.

     Category:English terms with quotations#NEGATIVE

Interjection

negativeCategory:English lemmas#NEGATIVECategory:English interjections#NEGATIVECategory:English entries with incorrect language header#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with entries#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with 10 entries#NEGATIVE

1. (lawCategory:en:Law#NEGATIVE, 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."

     Category:English terms with quotations#NEGATIVE

Anagrams

• agentive, gate vein, veganite

Adjective

negativeCategory:Albanian non-lemma forms#NEGATIVECategory:Albanian adjective forms#NEGATIVECategory:Albanian entries with incorrect language header#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with entries#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with 10 entries#NEGATIVE

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

Adjective

negativeCategory:Danish non-lemma forms#NEGATIVECategory:Danish adjective forms#NEGATIVECategory:Danish entries with incorrect language header#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with entries#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with 10 entries#NEGATIVE

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

Pronunciation

• Audio (Germany (Berlin)):

  (file)

  Category:German terms with audio pronunciation#NEGATIVE

• Audio (Germany (Berlin)):

  (file)

  Category:German terms with audio pronunciation#NEGATIVE

Adjective

negativeCategory:German non-lemma forms#NEGATIVECategory:German adjective forms#NEGATIVECategory:German entries with incorrect language header#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with entries#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with 10 entries#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

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /ne.ɡaˈti.ve/Category:Italian 4-syllable words#NEGATIVECategory:Italian terms with IPA pronunciation#NEGATIVE
• Rhymes: -iveCategory:Rhymes:Italian/ive#NEGATIVECategory:Rhymes:Italian/ive/4 syllables#NEGATIVE
• Hyphenation: ne‧ga‧tì‧ve

Adjective

negative f plCategory:Italian non-lemma forms#NEGATIVECategory:Italian adjective forms#NEGATIVECategory:Italian entries with incorrect language header#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with entries#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with 10 entries#NEGATIVE

1. feminine plural of negativo

Noun

negative fCategory:Italian non-lemma forms#NEGATIVECategory:Italian noun forms#NEGATIVECategory:Italian entries with incorrect language header#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with entries#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with 10 entries#NEGATIVE

1. plural of negativa

Anagrams

• agentive, negatevi, vengiate

Pronunciation

• (Classical Latin) IPA^(key): [nɛ.ɡaːˈtiː.wɛ]Category:Latin 4-syllable words#NEGATIVECategory:Latin terms with IPA pronunciation#NEGATIVE
• (modern Italianate Ecclesiastical) IPA^(key): [ne.ɡaˈtiː.ve]Category:Latin 4-syllable words#NEGATIVECategory:Latin terms with IPA pronunciation#NEGATIVE

Adjective

negātīveCategory:Latin non-lemma forms#NEGATIVECategory:Latin adjective forms#NEGATIVECategory:Latin entries with incorrect language header#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with entries#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with 10 entries#NEGATIVE

1. vocative masculine singular of negātīvus

Adjective

negativeCategory:Norwegian Bokmål non-lemma forms#NEGATIVECategory:Norwegian Bokmål adjective forms#NEGATIVECategory:Norwegian Bokmål entries with incorrect language header#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with entries#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with 10 entries#NEGATIVE

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

Adjective

negativeCategory:Norwegian Nynorsk non-lemma forms#NEGATIVECategory:Norwegian Nynorsk adjective forms#NEGATIVECategory:Norwegian Nynorsk entries with incorrect language header#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with entries#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with 10 entries#NEGATIVE

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

Verb

negativeCategory:Portuguese non-lemma forms#NEGATIVECategory:Portuguese verb forms#NEGATIVECategory:Portuguese entries with incorrect language header#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with entries#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with 10 entries#NEGATIVE

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

Adjective

negativeCategory:Swedish non-lemma forms#NEGATIVECategory:Swedish adjective forms#NEGATIVECategory:Swedish entries with incorrect language header#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with entries#NEGATIVECategory:Pages with 10 entries#NEGATIVE

1. definite natural masculine singular of negativ