Word.ws English Dictionary

false positive

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

Noun

false positive (plural false positives)

  1. A result of a test that shows as present something that is absent.
    • A false positive from a cancer screening test will unnecessarily frighten a healthy person; a false negative will deprive them of timely treatment.
    • A false positive can be returned on a password checking algorithm when the password is tested against a dictionary but the password does not contain a dictionary word.
    Synonyms:
    false alarm
  2. A type I error.

false positive meaning in Tamil, Indonesian and Vietnamese

false positive in Tamil

பிழையான நேர்க்குறிகள்

false positive in Indonesian

result of a test that shows as present something that is absent
hasil positif palsu, alarm palsu

false positive in Vietnamese

result of a test that shows as present something that is absent
nhận diện sai, kết quả dương tính giả, báo động giả, dương tính giả

Synonyms of false positive

Antonyms

Forms of false positive

pluralfalse positives

Questions about false positive

What does false positive mean?
False positive means a result of a test that shows as present something that is absent.
What is false positive in Tamil?
False positive in Tamil is பிழையான நேர்க்குறிகள். See False positive meaning in Tamil.
What part of speech is false positive?
False positive is a noun.
What is the plural of false positive?
The plural of false positive is false positives.

Words near false positive in the dictionary

  1. false pimpernels
  2. false pineapple
  3. false plane tree
  4. false plum anemone
  5. false plum anemones
  6. false positive
  7. false positives
  8. false potato beetle
  9. false potato beetles
  10. false pregnancies
  11. false pregnancy

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: false positive (page history and authors); false positive (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-false positive.wav.

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