negative

Adjective

negative (comparative more negative, superlative most negative)

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

   Antonyms:

   positive, good, acceptable, agreeable, all right, amazing, as fine as Dick's hatband, awesome, beatific, bene

2. Of a number: less than zero.

   Antonyms:

   positive, nonnegative

   1. Less than zero degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit.
      • I was out in negative weather today.
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.
   • 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 [1976], Leszek Kołakowski, translated by P[aul] S[teven] Falla, Main Currents of Marxism, volume I: The Founders, Oxford: Clarendon Press, translation of Główne nurty marksizmu: powstanie (in...

   Synonyms:

   negatory

   Antonyms:

   affirmative, intensifying, intensive, intensitive

6. (often) 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. (New-Age, derogatory, jargon) 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, Becoming a Reflective Practitioner, John Wiley & Sons, page 15
   • The threat of negative feelings may seem very real, but they are nothing more than mirages... Allow the unwanted feelings to evaporate and dissolve as the mirages that they are.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-T8...
10. Characterized by the presence of features which do not support a hypothesis.
11. (slang) 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 Uninfected Are Affected by AIDS (page 145)
12. (slang) COVID-19 negative.
13. (excessive) 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 August 14, Renee Holmes, “Personal advertisement”, in Gay Community News, volume 10, number 5, page 15
    • The hell? I wish I could follow you on that, but it makes negative sense.2002 September 7, Jef, “MST3K DVD Collection One”, in rec.arts.tv.mst3k.misc (Usenet)

Noun

negative (plural negatives)

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, declared she had never seen so lovely a creature.1749, Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, volume (please specify |volume=I to VI), London: A[ndrew] Millar, […], →OCLC
   • 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 negative.1843 April, Thomas Carlyle, “ch. XV, Practical — Devotional”, in Past and Present, American edition, Boston, Mass.: Charles C[offin] Little and James Brown, published 1843, →OCLC, book II (The...
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 Convention Of 1787: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia Of America's Founding (2005), Volume 1, page 391
   • The qualified negative of the President differs widely from this absolute negative of the British sovereign; […]1788, Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist, no. 68
4. An image in which dark areas represent light ones, and the converse.

   Antonyms:

   positive

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 III, London: Richard Bentley, […], (successor to Henry Colburn), →OCLC, page 191
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.

Verb

negative (third-person singular simple present negatives, present participle negativing, simple past and past participle negatived)

1. (transitive) 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 steak-and-kidney pudding for three, and substitute a humble request for roast mutton.1913, Norman Lindsay, A Curate in Bohemia, Sydney: N.S.W. Bookstall Co., published 1932, page 64
2. (transitive) 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 d'Urbervilles
3. (transitive) 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 this statement.1882, J. H. Riddell, “Old Mrs Jones”, in The Collected Ghost Stories of Mrs. J. H. Riddell, Dover, published 1977, page 192
   • "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. (transitive) 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 sub-departments by every other."1918 May 9, Lytton Strachey, “[Florence Nightingale.] Chapter III”, in Eminent Victorians: Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Dr. Arnold, General Gordon (Library of English Literature; LEL...
   • 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 entirely negatived by the impossibility of securing the necessary land.1945 March and April, T. F. Cameron, “New Works Procedure”, in Railway Magazine, page 71

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