negative

Not positive or neutral; bad; undesirable; unfavourable.

Adjective

  1. Not positive or neutral; bad; undesirable; unfavourable.
    • The high exchange rate will have a negative effect on our profits.
    • Customers didn’t like it: feedback was mostly negative.

    Synonyms: bad undesirable abysmal atrocious awful chronic coarse corny crap crapalicious crappy crummy deityforsaken dire disagreeable dismal dogshit dreadful fifth-rate foul fourth-rate godawful hellish hideous

    Antonyms: positive good acceptable agreeable all right amazing as fine as Dick's hatband awesome beatific bene blissful bodacious bona brilliant celestial commendable cool dandy as candy decent delightful divine enjoyable excellent exceptional

  2. Of a number: less than zero.

    Antonyms: positive nonnegative

    Hypernyms: nonzero nonpositive

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

      • I was out in negative weather today.

      Antonyms: positive nonnegative

      Hypernyms: nonzero nonpositive

  3. Of a test result: not positive, not detected.
    • negative detection of.
  4. Of electrical charge of an electron and related particles
  5. Denying a proposition; negating a concept.

    Synonyms: negatory

    Antonyms: affirmative intensifying intensive intensitive

  6. 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. Metalloidal, nonmetallic; contrasted with positive or basic.
    • The nitro group is negative.
  9. 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, Christopher Johns,...
    • 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&red...
    • 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...
  10. Characterized by the presence of features which do not support a hypothesis.
  11. 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. - quoted in 2013, William I. Johnston, HIV-Negative: How the...
  12. COVID-19 negative.

Origin

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

Forms

more negative most negative -ve −ve

Antonyms

positive

Related

negate negation negativism negatory

Derived

A negative binegative body negative carbon negative electronegative geonegative go negative gram-negative Gram-negative HIV-negative homonegative hypernegative immunonegative negamile negativate negative atheist negative bath negative binomial distribution negative capability negative clause negative cost negative crystal negative cutter negative deficit

Interjection

  1. No; 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:

Forms

-ve −ve

Antonyms

affirmative

Noun

  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,...
    • 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...
  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. - 1787, Luther Martin, cited in The Constitutional...
    • The qualified negative of the President differs widely from this absolute negative of the British sovereign; […] - 1788, Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist, no. 68
    • 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. An image in which dark areas represent light ones, and the converse.

    Antonyms: positive

    Coordinate Terms: diapositive

  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." - 1834, L[etitia] E[lizabeth] L[andon], chapter XXIII, in Francesca Carrara. […], volume...
  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.

Forms

negatives -ve −ve

Derived

connegative double negative false negative internegative multinegative negatival neg-raising stereonegative

Verb

  1. 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, 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...
    • 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.:
  2. 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, Thomas Hardy, chapter XXXIII, in Tess of the...
  3. 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...
    • "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:
  4. 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...
    • 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...
    • 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...

Forms

negatives negativing negatived -ve −ve

Derived

negativation negativer