Romantic relationships often develop recurring patterns that can impact their health and longevity. Recognizing these patterns serves as the first step toward creating more positive relationship ... The meaning of NEGATIVE is marked by denial, prohibition, or refusal; also : marked by absence, withholding, or removal of something positive.

Understanding the Context

How to use negative in a sentence. A fact, situation, or experience that is negative is unpleasant, depressing, or harmful. The news from overseas is overwhelmingly negative. All this had an extremely negative effect on the criminal justice system.

Key Insights

This will negatively affect the result over the first half of the year. Indicating opposition or resistance: a negative reaction to the new advertising campaign. 2. Lacking positive or constructive features, especially: a. Unpleasant; disagreeable: had a negative experience on his first job.

Final Thoughts

b. Gloomy; pessimistic: a negative outlook. Adjective negative (comparative more negative, superlative most negative) Not positive or neutral; bad; undesirable; unfavourable. Characterized by the omission or absence of that which is affirmative or positive: as, a negative attitude; negative goodness. Having the power of stopping or restraining by refusing assent or concurrence; imposing a veto. a negative statement, answer, word, gesture, etc.: to answer a request with a negative; Words such as no, not, nor, and nobody are negatives.

See in the negative below. There are 23 meanings listed in OED's entry for the noun negative, nine of which are labelled obsolete. See ‘Meaning & use’ for definitions, usage, and quotation evidence. NEGATIVE definition: expressing or containing negation or denial.