Negativize
verb
verb ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Verb
- 1 To make negative. transitive
"It is possible to negativize dame and say dame zya nai 'it isn't no-good', to deny dame' da; but you can not negativize ikenai, so that instead of *ikenaku nai you will say wa'ruku nai 'it isn't bad'."
Example
More examples"It is possible to negativize dame and say dame zya nai 'it isn't no-good', to deny dame' da; but you can not negativize ikenai, so that instead of *ikenaku nai you will say wa'ruku nai 'it isn't bad'."
Etymology
From negative + -ize.
More for "negativize"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.