Word.ws English Dictionary

unpositive

unpositive adjective: not positive; negative.

Adjective

unpositive (comparative more unpositive, superlative most unpositive)

  1. Not positive; negative.
    • […] no nation is going to dare provoke an atomic war with us unless it is convinced that the first shock will do away with our power, to use a rather unpositive word, to retaliate.1956, United States. Congress. House, Hearings, volume 6, page 2702
  2. Not positive; unsure.
    • The following three statements will provide an elementary example of what is meant by range: He's 24 years old (positive). He may be about 24 years old (tentative). I'm not sure how old he is (unpositive/uncertain) […]1977, Jan Ate van Ek, L. G. Alexander, The Threshold Level for Modern Language Learning in Schools (page 159)

Forms of unpositive

comparativemore unpositive
superlativemost unpositive

Origin of unpositive

From un- + positive.

Questions about unpositive

What does unpositive mean?
Unpositive means not positive; negative.
What part of speech is unpositive?
Unpositive is an adjective.

Words near unpositive in the dictionary

  1. unposes
  2. unposh
  3. unposing
  4. unposited
  5. unpositioned
  6. unpositive
  7. unpossess
  8. unpossessable
  9. unpossessed
  10. unpossesses
  11. unpossessing

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: unpositive (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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Cite this entry: “unpositive.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/unpositive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.