A Class Room Logic / Deductive and Inductive, with Special Application to the Science and Art of Teaching

by George Hastings McNair

11. PRIVATIVE AND NEGO-POSITIVE TERMS.

A privative term is one which is positive in form but negative in meaning. Such words as blind, deaf, dumb,dead, maimed, orphaned, are privative terms, in that there is no negative prefix or suffix and yet they denote the absence of certain qualities. “Blind,” for example, is positive in form, but denotes absence of sight.

A nego-positive term is one which is negative in form but positive in meaning. Such terms as invaluable, unloosed, immoral, indwell, are nego-positive because, though they have negative prefixes, yet they possess a certain positive meaning. “Invaluable,” for instance, does not mean not-valuable, but very valuable.