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say it: PAH-zuh-tiv
positive is an adjective and noun meaning "characterized by or displaying affirmation or acceptance or certainty etc.". It is pronounced /ˈpɑzətɪv/ — PAH-zuh-tiv. It carries 13 recorded senses.
characterized by or displaying affirmation or acceptance or certainty etc.
“a positive attitude”
“the reviews were all positive”
“a positive benefit”
“a positive demand”
persuaded of; very sure
“were convinced that it would be to their advantage to join”
“I am positive he is lying”
“was confident he would win”
indicating existence or presence of a suspected condition or pathogen
“a positive pregnancy test”
medicine
impossible to deny or disprove
“incontrovertible proof of the defendant's innocence”
“proof positive”
“an irrefutable argument”
of or relating to positivism
“positivist thinkers”
“positivist doctrine”
“positive philosophy”
reckoned, situated or tending in the direction which naturally or arbitrarily is taken to indicate increase or progress or onward motion
“positive increase in graduating students”
marked by excessive confidence
“an arrogant and cocksure materialist”
“so overconfident and impudent as to speak to the queen”
“the less he knows the more positive he gets”
the primary form of an adjective or adverb; denotes a quality without qualification, comparison, or relation to increase or diminution
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for positive come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.