Sekirov Dictionary

negative

/ˈnɛɡ.ə.tɪv/

adjective 14
noun 9
verb 4
exclamation 1
forms 5
phrases 1

adjective14

•
bad or unwanted, rather than good
- The high exchange rate will have a negative effect on our profits.
- Customers didn’t like it: feedback was mostly negative.
•
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). — 2009
•
Of a test result: not positive, not detected.
- negative detection of.
Characterized by the presence of features which do not support a hypothesis.
•
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. — 2013
COVID-19 negative.
•
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.
Of a number: less than zero.
•
Less than zero degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit.
- I was out in negative weather today.
Of electrical charge of an electron and related particles
•
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. — 1978
•
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. — 1982
Of or relating to a photographic image in which the colours of the original, and the relations of left and right, are reversed.
•
Metalloidal, nonmetallic; contrasted with positive or basic.
- The nitro group is negative.

noun9

•
A statement that something didn’t happen or doesn’t exist.
- You can’t prove a negative.
An unfavorable point or characteristic.
An image in which dark areas represent light ones, and the converse.
•
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." — 1834
A negative quantity.
The negative plate of a voltaic or electrolytic cell.
Refusal or withholding of assents; prohibition, veto
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.
•
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. — 1787

verb4

•
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. — 1887
•
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. — 1892
•
To disprove.
- "However, the fact that they need crystals negatives that idea...we must seek a material explanation." — 1957
•
To 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

exclamation1

•
No; nay.
- "Negative Marcel. No IOC. Patient has been drinking heavily, we can give him nothing for pain." — 1980

forms

negatived · negativing · negatives · more negative · most negative

Phrases with negative

negative Nancy
A person who is considered excessively and disagreeably pessimistic.

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