What word has negative meaning

Negative words are often used to describe someone or something that is unpleasant. They can also be used to express frustration or dissatisfaction with a situation. While negative words can sometimes upset or hurt someone, they are often needed in order to fully express or explain how one is feeling. Negative words can also be used as a warning, and can actually prevent others from being hurt or getting into trouble.

What Is a Negative Word?

Negative words include any word that has a negative connotation attached to it. While it is very easy to distinguish negative words from positive words, it can be more difficult when dealing with neutral words. These words, while they may seem to be negative words in some cases, do not actually imply anything wrong. Negative words themselves are more direct and are often used when positive or neutral language will not suffice.

Negative Words With Examples

• “My coworker is so abrasive! I can never get him to agree to anything.”
• “I wish my son cared about something, but he seems apathetic towards everything.”
• “Mom must think I can’t do anything right; she’s very controlling.”
• “You need to stop lying. Being dishonest hurts everyone involved.”
• “Don’t be impatient. Good things come to those who wait.”
• “I just feel so anxious! What if this interview goes horribly wrong?”
• “He promised not to tell. I’ve never felt more betrayed.”
• “Sorry, we thought this cake was going to be much bigger. You must be disappointed.”
• “His pants fell down on stage, in front of everyone. Of course, he was embarrassed!”
• “You don’t need to be jealous. If you work hard, you can afford that new gaming console, too.”

List of Negative Words

List of Common Negative Words

• Abrasive
• Apathetic
• Controlling
• Dishonest
• Impatient
• Anxious
• Betrayed
• Disappointed
• Embarrassed
• Jealous
• Abysmal
• Bad
• Callous
• Corrosive
• Damage
• Despicable
• Don’t
• Enraged
• Fail
• Gawky
• Haggard
• Hurt
• Icky
• Insane
• Jealous
• Lose
• Malicious
• Naive
• Not
• Objectionable
• Pain
• Questionable
• Reject
• Rude
• Sad
• Sinister
• Stuck
• Tense
• Ugly
• Unsightly
• Vice
• Wary
• Yell
• Zero
• Adverse
• Banal
• Can’t
• Corrupt
• Damaging
• Detrimental
• Dreadful
• Eroding
• Faulty
• Ghastly
• Hard
• Hurtful
• Ignorant
• Insidious
• Junky
• Lousy
• Mean
• Nasty
• Noxious
• Odious
• Perturb
• Quirky
• Renege
• Ruthless
• Savage
• Slimy
• Stupid
• Terrible
• Undermine
• Untoward
• Vicious
• Weary
• Yucky
• Alarming
• Barbed
• Clumsy
• Dastardly
• Dirty
• Dreary
• Evil
• Fear
• Grave
• Hard-hearted
• Ignore
• Injure
• Insipid
• Lumpy
• Menacing
• Naughty
• None
• Offensive
• Pessimistic
• Quit
• Repellant
• Scare
• Smelly
• Substandard
• Terrifying
• Unfair
• Unwanted
• Vile
• Wicked
• Angry
• Belligerent
• Coarse
• Crazy
• Dead
• Disease
• Feeble
• Greed
• Harmful
• Ill
• Injurious
• Messy
• Negate
• No one
• Old
• Petty
• Reptilian
• Scary
• Sobbing
• Suspect
• Threatening
• Unfavorable
• Unwelcome
• Villainous
• Woeful
• Annoy
• Bemoan
• Cold
• Creepy
• Decaying
• Disgusting
• Fight
• Grim
• Hate
• Immature
• Misshapen
• Negative
• Nothing
• Oppressive
• Plain
• Repugnant
• Scream
• Sorry
• Suspicious
• Unhappy
• Unwholesome
• Vindictive
• Worthless
• Anxious
• Beneath
• Cold-hearted
• Criminal
• Deformed
• Disheveled
• Filthy
• Grimace
• Hideous
• Imperfect
• Missing
• Never
• Neither
• Poisonous
• Repulsive
• Severe
• Spiteful
• Unhealthy
• Unwieldy
• Wound
• Apathy
• Boring
• Collapse
• Cruel
• Deny
• Dishonest
• Foul
• Gross
• Homely
• Impossible
• Misunderstood
• No
• Nowhere
• Poor
• Revenge
• Shocking
• Sticky
• Unjust
• Unwise
• Appalling
• Broken
• Confused
• Cry
• Deplorable
• Dishonorable
• Frighten
• Grotesque
• Horrendous
• Inane
• Moan
• Nobody
• Prejudice
• Revolting
• Shoddy
• Stinky
• Unlucky
• Upset
• Atrocious
• Contrary
• Cutting
• Depressed
• Dismal
• Frightful
• Gruesome
• Horrible
• Inelegant
• Moldy
• Nondescript
• Rocky
• Sick
• Stormy
• Unpleasant
• Awful
• Contradictory
• Deprived
• Distress
• Guilty
• Hostile
• Infernal
• Monstrous
• Nonsense
• Rotten
• Sickening
• Stressful
• Unsatisfactory

Negative Personality Adjectives

Abrasive

Abrasive people are often difficult on purpose and will disagree with others. They can be hurtful to others as well, and often will not care they are doing so.

Apathetic

People who are apathetic lack the average amount of care for someone or something. While they are not outright hurtful or difficult, this can lead to a dip in the quality of their work or relationships.

Controlling

Someone who is controlling will often try to ensure things go their way, to the point that it is troubling for others.

Dishonest

Dishonest people will often lie, either outright or by omission. They may avoid the truth because they do not want to get into trouble or to cause confrontation.

Impatient

People who cannot wait for an outcome or result are impatient. They may rush their work, affecting the quality. They may rush others as well, which can impair their relationships.

Negative Feeling Adjectives

Anxious

If someone is feeling anxious, they are worried about something. This can affect their mood negatively and lead to problems with focus.

Betrayed

Someone who feels betrayed feels as though their trust has been violated, often by a friend or loved one.

Disappointed

Disappointment is felt when someone’s expectations are not met. These expectations can be for a person, situation, or item.

Embarrassed

People most often feel embarrassed when they feel that they have done something wrong or unappealing. This feeling is usually magnified if someone is caught doing something wrong.

Jealous

Someone is jealous when they see something they want in the possession of someone else. Jealousy is most often thought of as being over a partner or money but can be over an item or over social status as well.

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List of Negative Words in English

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Common Negative Words

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Last Updated on June 23, 2021

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Important negative meanings can be missed because they are not always in familiar simple words like “not”

DEFINITION OF HIDDEN NEGATIVES

Negative statements do not always contain the fundamental negative words not, no, never etc., There are very many ordinary words whose meaning includes the negativeness of these words (see 310. Aspects of Negation). Some contain familiar negative word parts such as un-, in-, dis-, mis- and -less (see 106. Word-like Suffixes and 146. Some Important Prefix Types). Many others, though – of all grammatical types – express negative meaning without any obviously negative feature at all.

Take the adjective debatable. It seems to be a synonym of arguable, but it has a negativity that arguable lacks. It suggests the writer’s disagreement with a statement in the same way as questionabl e (see 152. Agreeing and Disagreeing in Formal Contexts). Similarly, the conjunction let alone has no obviously negative components but its meaning includes the idea of not (see 191. Exotic Grammar Structures 3, #2).

Expressions like debatable and let alone are examples of what I call hidden negatives. Many are also described as having a “negative connotation” (see 16. Ways of Distinguishing Similar Words, #2). In this post I wish to illustrate their importance and variety, and to provide some practice in recognising them. For a few further examples, see 284. Words with a Surprising Meaning.

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THE VALUE TO WRITERS OF HIDDEN NEGATIVES

Negative statements in general are common in professional writing and newspaper opinion columns because these kinds of writing so often have to make judgements – a kind of statement that is necessarily sometimes negative (see 152. Agreeing and Disagreeing in Formal Contexts and 168. Ways of Arguing 2).

Hidden negatives have at least two important uses in the expression of judgements. Firstly, they are often more polite than negatives of a more obvious kind – a valuable property in professional writing (see 166. Appropriacy in Professional English). Secondly, they allow variety in the way that negative meaning is expressed – important when negative statements are being made in large numbers (see 5. Repetition with Synonyms).

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PRACTICE IN THE RECOGNITION OF HIDDEN NEGATIVES

Negative meaning in a statement is as important as any other meaning. This is clear from considering a sentence like Hippopotamuses are not safe to approach: if we fail to notice not, the opposite meaning from the intended one will be understood, with possibly fatal consequences. Happily, normal negatives like not are rarely missed, because they are so familiar to us. Hidden negatives, on the other hand, are much easier to miss, because they will not be so familiar.

To provide practice in the recognition of hidden negatives, an exercise below presents eleven different examples to try and identify. First, though, it may help to analyse some other examples. Consider the words excessive, overstated, extreme, speculative, at first sight, on paper, feeble, limited, naive and hard to accept. The first three all indicate a problem with something because it is more than what is considered acceptable. A typical use might be:

(a) The dangers of nuclear energy are overstated.

The writer is here arguing in favour of nuclear energy by suggesting it is less dangerous than is usually claimed. The meaning is similar to that of too, a more well-known word that is suggestive of a negative excess (see 189. Expressing Sufficiency).

The word speculative once occurred in an academic research article that I gave to some students to read. The writer used it to dismiss a theory because it was not based on proper research. It means “based on intuition or reflection”. While ideas based on intuition or reflection may be more acceptable in a subject like philosophy, in a social science intuition without empirical research evidence is considered to be a weakness. My students, unfortunately, did not appreciate that, and thought that the writer was recommending the theory in question instead of criticising it.

The phrases at first sight and on paper are similar to the adverbs superficially (see 85. Preposition Phrases & Corresponding Adverbs) and apparently (see 132. Tricky Word Contrasts 4, #7). All refer to the fact that when we see something for the first time we do not notice hidden aspects of it. With at first sight and superficially, good things can seem bad and bad things can seem good. On paper suggests that something intended to be good is not actually so. Hence, if we see any of these expressions accompanying a positive description of something, we should understand that the positiveness is false. Consider this example:

(b) At first sight, buying furniture made from artificial wood is good value for money.

The message here is that such furniture is not really good value for money!

The word feeble illustrates another common feature of hidden negatives: metaphorical meaning (see 4. Metaphorical Meanings). The base meaning, “extremely weak”, is about health. Used to describe, say, an argument, it suggests disagreement.

Now here is the practice exercise. The task is to find a hidden negative in all of the following statements except one. Answers are given afterwards.

1. In view of its effect on health, smoking has little justification.

2. The power of government spending to eradicate poverty is a myth.

3. Another bogus idea is that football success can be achieved without money.

4. There is a degree of truth in the claim that British colonialism brought benefits as well as suffering.

5. The teaching of grammatical structures by means of parrot-like repetition is justified on quite shaky grounds.

6. The construction of new roads is an all too easy solution to the problem of traffic congestion.

7. Women are better at learning languages than men, according to some wishful thinkers.

8. The notion that poverty is a self-inflicted evil must be dismissed immediately.

9. The use of mosquito nets is an apparently simple solution to the problem of malaria in tropical countries.

10. Suggesting that future humans will live for 150 years or more stretches belief a little.

11. Weight can be lost without exercising, it is often erroneously believed.

12. A flimsy case is sometimes made that humans did not really visit the moon in 1969.

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Answers:

1 = little (not to be confused with the positive a little!).

2 = a myth (= “an untrue story”. Note also the adjective mythical. Both words are of Greek origin – see 90. The Greek Impact on English Vocabulary).

3 = bogus

4 = No negative word. A degree of is positive like a little and a few

5 = shaky (another good example of a metaphorical negative)

6 = (all) too (similar in meaning to excessive, overstated and extreme). Adding all is emphatic.

7 = wishful thinkers (wishful nearly always accompanies some form of THINK. It suggests impossible dreams).

8 = dismissed

9 = apparently (similar in meaning to superficially – not to be confused with obviously).

10 = stretches belief (rather a polite expression: the negative meaning is made less brutal by the idea of “stretching” instead of breaking)

11 = erroneously

12 = flimsy (another word meaning “weak”, like feeble, shaky, fragile and thin)

Negative words ! A negative is a word or phrase that shows you reject or disagree with something. We use negatives all the time in regular conversation, so a lot of these words should be familiar to you.

Negative words

List of Negative words

Below, you’ll find lists of common negative words used in a variety of situations.

Words That Start with A

• Abysmal
• Adverse
• Alarming
• Angry
• Annoy
• Anxious
• Apathy
• Appalling
• Atrocious
• Awful

Words That Start with B

• Bad
• Banal
• Barbed
• Belligerent
• Bemoan
• Beneath
• Boring
• Broken

Words That Start with C

• Callous
• Can’t
• Clumsy
• Coarse
• Cold
• Cold-hearted
• Collapse
• Confused
• Contradictory
• Contrary
• Corrosive
• Corrupt
• Crazy
• Creepy
• Criminal
• Cruel
• Cry
• Cutting

Words That Start with D

• Damage
• Damaging
• Dastardly
• Dead
• Decaying
• Deformed
• Deny
• Deplorable
• Depressed
• Deprived
• Despicable
• Detrimental
• Dirty
• Disease
• Disgusting
• Disheveled
• Dishonest
• Dishonorable
• Dismal
• Distress
• Don’t
• Dreadful
• Dreary

Words That Start with E

• Enraged
• Eroding
• Evil

Words That Start with F

• Fail
• Faulty
• Fear
• Feeble
• Fight
• Filthy
• Foul
• Frighten
• Frightful

Words That Start with G

• Gawky
• Ghastly
• Grave
• Greed
• Grim
• Grimace
• Gross
• Grotesque
• Gruesome
• Guilty

Words That Start with H

• Haggard
• Hard
• Hard-hearted
• Harmful
• Hate
• Hideous
• Homely
• Horrendous
• Horrible
• Hostile
• Hurt
• Hurtful

Words That Start with I

• Icky
• Ignorant
• Ignore
• Ill
• Immature
• Imperfect
• Impossible
• Inane
• Inelegant
• Infernal
• Injure
• Injurious
• Insane
• Insidious
• Insipid

Words That Start with J

• Jealous
• Junky

Words That Start with L

• Lose
• Lousy
• Lumpy

Words That Start with M

• Malicious
• Mean
• Menacing
• Messy
• Misshapen
• Missing
• Misunderstood
• Moan
• Moldy
• Monstrous

Words That Start with N

• Naive
• Nasty
• Naughty
• Negate
• Negative
• Never
• No
• Nobody
• Nondescript
• Nonsense
• Not
• Noxious

• None
• No one
• Nothing
• Neither
• Nowhere

Words That Start with O

• Objectionable
• Odious
• Offensive
• Old
• Oppressive

Words That Start with P

• Pain
• Perturb
• Pessimistic
• Petty
• Plain
• Poisonous
• Poor
• Prejudice

Words That Start with Q

• Questionable
• Quirky
• Quit

Words That Start with R

• Reject
• Renege
• Repellant
• Reptilian
• Repugnant
• Repulsive
• Revenge
• Revolting
• Rocky
• Rotten
• Rude
• Ruthless

Words That Start with S

• Sad
• Savage
• Scare
• Scary
• Scream
• Severe
• Shocking
• Shoddy
• Sick
• Sickening
• Sinister
• Slimy
• Smelly
• Sobbing
• Sorry
• Spiteful
• Sticky
• Stinky
• Stormy
• Stressful
• Stuck
• Stupid
• Substandard
• Suspect
• Suspicious

Words That Start with T

• Tense
• Terrible
• Terrifying
• Threatening

Words That Start with U

• Ugly
• Undermine
• Unfair
• Unfavorable
• Unhappy
• Unhealthy
• Unjust
• Unlucky
• Unpleasant
• Unsatisfactory
• Unsightly
• Untoward
• Unwanted
• Unwelcome
• Unwholesome
• Unwieldy
• Unwise
• Upset

Words That Start with V

• Vice
• Vicious
• Vile
• Villainous
• Vindictive

Words That Start with W

• Wary
• Weary
• Wicked
• Woeful
• Worthless
• Wound

Words That Start with Y

• Yell
• Yucky

Words That Start with Z

• Zero

• Robin has no relatives here.
• Jack is not right.
• Bill has nothing to say.
• I have never seen this case.
• There was no one in the field.
• None can hide the truth.
• Nobody asked me anything about Bob.
• John found the pen nowhere.
• My mom doesn’t like this movie, neither do I.
• Neither I nor my brother attended the party.
• My friend did not taste the pudding, I didn’t either.
• None of us liked the program.
• Not any of the apples were fresh.
• Ben has no problem with this decision.
• Bob was not looking okay.
• Alice has nothing to do.
• No one supported Jeff.
• Never do anything against humanity.
• Richard found nothing in the right place.
• None of the students were happy to hear it.

Negative Words | Image