negative

comparative more negative · superlative most negative · alternative abbreviation -ve · alternative abbreviation −ve

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

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

   1 more example

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

   Synonyms: bad, undesirable, abysmal, atrocious, awful, bad, chronic, coarse · Antonyms: positive, good, acceptable, agreeable, all right, amazing, as fine as Dick's hatband, awesome

2. mathematicsOf a number: less than zero.

   Antonyms: positive, nonnegative

   1. climatologyLess than zero degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit.

      I was out in negative weather today.

      Antonyms: positive, nonnegative

3. medicineOf a test result: not positive, not detected.

   negative detection of.

4. natural sciencesOf electrical charge of an electron and related particlesFirst known use the 18th c.
5. human sciencesDenying 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.

   1978 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume I: The Founders, Oxford: Clarendon Press, translation of Główne nurty marksizmu: powstanie (in Polish), →ISBN, →OCLC, page 417

   Synonyms: negatory · Antonyms: affirmative, intensifying, intensive, intensitive

6. oftenPessimistic; 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. chemistryMetalloidal, nonmetallic; contrasted with positive or basic.

   The nitro group is negative.

9. New AgederogatoryjargonOften preceded by emotion, energy, feeling, or thought: to be avoided, bad, difficult, disagreeable, painful, potentially damaging, unpleasant, unwanted.

   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.

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

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   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).

   2009, Christopher Johns, Becoming a Reflective Practitioner, John Wiley & Sons, page 15

   2011, Joe Vitale, The Key: the missing secret for attracting anything you want, Body, Mind & Spirit, http://books.google.com.au/books?id=hf5qEW9n_fsC&pg=PT109&dq=positive+feelings&hl=en&sa=X&ei=MkX-T8PQCo6KmQXjr4GhBQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=unwanted%20feelings&f=false 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.

10. Characterized by the presence of features which do not support a hypothesis.
11. slangHIV 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.

    quoted in 2013, William I. Johnston, HIV-Negative: How the Uninfected Are Affected by AIDS (page 145)

12. slangCOVID-19 negative.
13. excessiveNo, not any, zero.

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

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

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

    1982 August 14, Renee Holmes, “Personal advertisement”, in Gay Community News, volume 10, number 5, page 15

plural negatives · alternative abbreviation -ve · alternative abbreviation −ve

1. Refusal or withholding of assents; prohibition, vetoFirst known use 15th c.

   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.

   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)

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   “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.

   1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC

2. An unfavorable point or characteristic.
3. lawA right of veto.

   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.

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   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.

   1787, Luther Martin, cited in The Constitutional Convention Of 1787: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia Of America's Founding (2005), Volume 1, page 391

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

   1788, Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist, no. 68

4. artsAn image in which dark areas represent light ones, and the converse.First known use 19th c.

   And to unravel the question of why I was doing this, I develop the negative, inspect the shadows, search for hidden clues.

   1999, John Vernon, “Heat”, in A Book of Reasons, Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Houghton Mifflin Company, →ISBN, page 17

   Antonyms: positive

5. grammarA 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."

   1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XXIII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 191

6. mathematicsA negative quantity.
7. hobbiesA 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. human sciencesA statement that something didn’t happen or doesn’t exist.

   You can’t prove a negative.

present singular third person negatives · participle present negativing · participle past negatived · past negatived · alternative abbreviation -ve · alternative abbreviation −ve

1. transitiveTo refuse; to veto.

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

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

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

   1887, L. T. Meade, chapter XVIII, in The Palace Beautiful: A Story for Girls

   "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.

   1913, Norman Lindsay, A Curate in Bohemia, Sydney: N.S.W. Bookstall Co., published 1932, page 64

2. transitiveTo 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.

   1892, Thomas Hardy, chapter XXXIII, in Tess of the d'Urbervilles

3. transitiveTo disprove.

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

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

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   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.

   1882, J. H. Riddell, “Old Mrs Jones”, in The Collected Ghost Stories of Mrs. J. H. Riddell, Dover, published 1977, page 192

4. transitiveTo make ineffective; to neutralize; to negate.

   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.

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

   4 more examples

   "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."

   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

   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.

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

   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.

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

   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.

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

alternative abbreviation -ve · alternative abbreviation −ve

1. lawNo; nay.

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

   1980, Richard Louis Newmann, Siege of Orbitor, page xxiv. 93