Word.ws English Dictionary

go negative

go negative verb: to focus on attacking political opponents rather than promoting oneself.

Verb

go negative (third-person singular simple present goes negative, present participle going negative, simple past went negative, past participle gone negative)

  1. (US) To focus on attacking political opponents rather than promoting oneself.
    • After losing several primaries and facing a campaign debt of $250,000, his associates persuaded him to go negative.2008, Lynda Lee Kaid, Christina Holtz-Bacha, Encyclopedia of Political Communication, volume 1
    • All four of the principle candidates in the 2008 presidential election “went negative” in their acceptance addresses.2011, Judith S. Trent, Robert V. Friedenberg, Robert E. Denton (Jr.), Political Campaign Communication: Principles and Practices (page 235)

Forms of go negative

third-person singular presentgoes negative
present participlegoing negative
pastwent negative
past participlegone negative

Questions about go negative

What does go negative mean?
Go negative means to focus on attacking political opponents rather than promoting oneself.
What part of speech is go negative?
Go negative is a verb.
What is the past tense of go negative?
The past tense of go negative is went negative.

Words near go negative in the dictionary

  1. go moggy
  2. go nap
  3. go nap on
  4. go narrow
  5. go native
  6. go negative
  7. go night-night
  8. go nowhere
  9. go nowhere fast
  10. go nuclear
  11. go nuts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: go negative (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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