Negative

//ˈnɛɡəʈɪv// adj, intj, noun, verb, slang

adj, intj, noun, verb, slang ·Very common ·Middle school level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 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."

  2. 2
    a piece of photographic film showing an image with light and shade or colors reversed wordnet
  3. 3
    An unfavorable point or characteristic.
  4. 4
    a reply of denial wordnet
  5. 5
    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."

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  1. 6
    An image in which dark areas represent light ones, and the converse.
  2. 7
    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.""

  3. 8
    A negative quantity.
  4. 9
    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.
  5. 10
    The negative plate of a voltaic or electrolytic cell.
  6. 11
    A statement that something didn’t happen or doesn’t exist.

    "You can’t prove a negative."

Verb
  1. 1
    To refuse; to veto. transitive

    "Poppy earnestly begged to be allowed to go with Jasmine on the roof, but this the good lady negatived with horror."

  2. 2
    vote against; refuse to endorse; refuse to assent wordnet
  3. 3
    To contradict. transitive

    ""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."

  4. 4
    To disprove. transitive

    "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."

  5. 5
    To make ineffective; to neutralize; to negate. transitive

    ""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.""

Adjective
  1. 1
    Not positive or neutral; bad; undesirable; unfavourable.

    "The high exchange rate will have a negative effect on our profits."

  2. 2
    Of a number: less than zero.
  3. 3
    Of a number: less than zero.; Less than zero degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit.

    "I was out in negative weather today."

  4. 4
    Of a test result: not positive, not detected.

    "negative detection of."

  5. 5
    Of electrical charge of an electron and related particles
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  1. 6
    Denying a proposition; negating a concept.
  2. 7
    Pessimistic; not tending to see the bright side of things. often

    "I don’t like to hang around him very much because he can be so negative about his petty problems."

  3. 8
    Of or relating to a photographic image in which the colours of the original, and the relations of left and right, are reversed.
  4. 9
    Metalloidal, nonmetallic; contrasted with positive or basic.

    "The nitro group is negative."

  5. 10
    Often preceded by emotion, energy, feeling, or thought: to be avoided, bad, difficult, disagreeable, painful, potentially damaging, unpleasant, unwanted. New-Age, derogatory, jargon

    "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)."

  6. 11
    Characterized by the presence of features which do not support a hypothesis.
  7. 12
    HIV negative. slang

    "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."

  8. 13
    COVID-19 negative. slang
  9. 14
    No, not any, zero. excessive

    "The negative contact we get inside here [prison] is enough to make you even more bitter and further alienated from society and ourselves."

Adjective
  1. 1
    involving disadvantage or harm wordnet
  2. 2
    expressing or consisting of a negation or refusal or denial wordnet
  3. 3
    having a negative charge wordnet
  4. 4
    designed or tending to discredit, especially without positive or helpful suggestions wordnet
  5. 5
    having the quality of something harmful or unpleasant wordnet
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  1. 6
    characterized by or displaying negation or denial or opposition or resistance; having no positive features wordnet
  2. 7
    less than zero wordnet
  3. 8
    reckoned in a direction opposite to that regarded as positive wordnet
  4. 9
    not indicating the presence of microorganisms or disease or a specific condition wordnet
Intj
  1. 1
    No; nay.

    ""Negative Marcel. No IOC. Patient has been drinking heavily, we can give him nothing for pain.""

Example

More examples

"Some people argue that technology has negative effects."

Etymology

From Middle English negative, negatif, from Old French negatif, from Latin negātīvus (“that denies, negative”), from negāre (“to deny”); see negate.

Related phrases

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.