Word.ws English Dictionary

false negative

Syllables: false ne·ga·tiveUK/ˈfɔːls ˈnɛɡətɪv/US/ˈfɔls ˈnɛɡətɪv/

false negative noun: a result of a test that shows as absent something that is present.

Noun

false negative (plural false negatives)

  1. A result of a test that shows as absent something that is present.
    • While a false positive from a cancer screening test will unnecessarily frighten a healthy person, a false negative will deprive them of timely treatment.
    • Nature has three great stages, through which she carries each and all: there is first a false affirmative, then a false negative; then there is the combining doctrine, which destroys the error by destroying the partiality and exclusiveness of both.1835 February 7, “System of Nature”, in J[ames] E[lishama] Smith, editor, The Shepherd, number 24, London: Printed and published by B. D. Cousins, […], →OCLC, page 187, column 1
  2. A type II error (“accepting the null hypothesis when it is false”).
    • Statisticians sometimes refer to false negative results as Type II errors. Type II errors cannot be controlled explicitly, but are controlled implicitly via the experimental design.2003, Dov Stekel, “Experimental Design”, in Microarray Bioinformatics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 222
    Synonyms:
    FN

false negative meaning in Tamil and Indonesian

false negative in Tamil

போலி எதிர்மறை

false negative in Indonesian

result of a test that shows as absent something that is present
hasil negatif palsu

Examples of false negative in a sentence

  • A is highly screening for B when the percentage of false negatives is small.1958, The Chicago Medical School Quarterly, volumes 19–20, Chicago, Ill.: Chicago Medical School, →ISSN, →OCLC:
  • Errors occur when completely or partly covered sensors do not report a load (false negatives) or when sensors show the detection of a product even though they are not loaded (false positives).2007, Christian Metzger, Jan Meyer, Elgar Fleisch, Gerhard Tröster, “Weight-sensitive Foam to Monitor Product Availability on Retail...

Synonyms of false negative

Antonyms

Forms of false negative

pluralfalse negatives

Questions about false negative

What does false negative mean?
False negative means a result of a test that shows as absent something that is present.
What is false negative in Tamil?
False negative in Tamil is போலி எதிர்மறை. See False negative meaning in Tamil.
How do you use false negative in a sentence?
A is highly screening for B when the percentage of false negatives is small.
What part of speech is false negative?
False negative is a noun.
How do you pronounce false negative?
False negative is pronounced /ˈfɔːls ˈnɛɡətɪv/ (UK).
What is the plural of false negative?
The plural of false negative is false negatives.

Words near false negative in the dictionary

  1. false monarchs
  2. false morel
  3. false morels
  4. false move
  5. false moves
  6. false negative
  7. false negatives
  8. false nine
  9. false nines
  10. false northing
  11. false northings

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: false negative (page history and authors); false negative (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-false negative.ogg.

Cite this entry: “false negative.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/false_negative. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.