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negation

noun

Simple meaning

A denial or contradiction.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

nuhgayshuhn

Say the bold part a little louder.

US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

nəˈɡeɪʃən

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

noun

  1. The speech act of negating

  2. countable

    A denial or contradiction.

  3. logiccountable

    A proposition that is true if and only if another proposition is false

  4. logiccountable

    A proposition which is the contradictory of another proposition and which can be obtained from that other proposition by the appropriately placed addition/insertion of the word "not". (Or, in symbolic logic, by prepending that proposition with the symbol for the logical operator "not".)

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
B2 · Upper Intermediate (estimated)
Frequency
Uncommon

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

Aura for this meaning

This meaning: The speech act of negating

Used this way, negation is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Neutral
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Not strongly marked
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Matter-of-fact
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

double negationmere negationabsolute negationcomplete negationnegation operator

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.