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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

negative.

Not positive or neutral; bad; undesirable; unfavourable.

8 characters3 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

adj/ˈnɛɡ.ə.tɪv/[-ɾɪv]
  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.
  2. Of a number: less than zero.

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

    I was out in negative weather today.
  4. Of a test result: not positive, not detected.

    negative detection of.
  5. Of electrical charge of an electron and related particles

  6. Denying a proposition; negating a concept.

  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.
  8. Of or relating to a photographic image in which the colours of the original, and the relations of left and right, are reversed.

  9. Metalloidal, nonmetallic; contrasted with positive or basic.

    The nitro group is negative.
  10. Often preceded by emotion, energy, feeling, or thought: to be avoided, bad, difficult, disagreeable, painful, potentially damaging, unpleasant, unwanted.

    New-Age · derogatory · jargon
  11. Characterized by the presence of features which do not support a hypothesis.

  12. HIV negative.

    slang
  13. COVID-19 negative.

    slang
  14. No, not any, zero.

    excessive
Where this word comes from

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

noun/ˈnɛɡ.ə.tɪv/[-ɾɪv]
  1. Refusal or withholding of assents; prohibition, veto

  2. An unfavorable point or characteristic.

  3. A right of veto.

  4. An image in which dark areas represent light ones, and the converse.

  5. A word that indicates negation.

  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.
Where this word comes from

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

verb/ˈnɛɡ.ə.tɪv/[-ɾɪv]
  1. To refuse; to veto.

    transitive
  2. To contradict.

    transitive
  3. To disprove.

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

    transitive
Where this word comes from

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

intj/ˈnɛɡ.ə.tɪv/[-ɾɪv]
  1. No; nay.

Where this word comes from

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

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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.

Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.