Unpositive

adj

adj ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 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."

  2. 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) […]"

Example

More examples

"[…] 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."

Etymology

From un- + positive.

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