Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Characterized by or displaying certainty, acceptance, or affirmation.
  • adjective Measured or moving forward or in a direction of increase or progress.
  • adjective Desirable, admirable, or beneficial.
  • adjective Optimistic or constructive.
  • adjective Not disparaging or malicious.
  • adjective Very confident; certain: synonym: sure.
  • adjective Explicitly or openly expressed or laid down.
  • adjective Admitting of no doubt; irrefutable.
  • adjective Concerned with practical rather than theoretical matters.
  • adjective Of or relating to positivism.
  • adjective Of or relating to positive law.
  • adjective Of or relating to religion based on revelation rather than on nature or reason alone.
  • adjective Informal Utter; absolute.
  • adjective Relating to or designating a quantity greater than zero.
  • adjective Relating to or designating the sign (+).
  • adjective Relating to or designating a quantity, number, angle, or direction opposite to another designated as negative.
  • adjective Relating to or designating an electric charge of a sign opposite to that of an electron.
  • adjective Of or relating to a body having fewer electrons than protons.
  • adjective Chemistry Of or relating to an ion, the cation, that is attracted to a negative electrode.
  • adjective Medicine Indicating the presence of a particular disease, condition, or organism.
  • adjective Biology Indicating or characterized by response or motion toward the source of a stimulus, such as light.
  • adjective Having the areas of light and dark in their original and normal relationship, as in a photographic print made from a negative.
  • adjective Grammar Of, relating to, or being the simple uncompared degree of an adjective or adverb, as opposed to either the comparative or superlative.
  • adjective Driven by or generating power directly through intermediate machine parts having little or no play.
  • noun An affirmative element or characteristic.
  • noun Mathematics A quantity greater than zero.
  • noun Physics A positive electric charge.
  • noun A photographic image in which the lights and darks appear as they do in nature.
  • noun The uncompared degree of an adjective or adverb.
  • noun A word in this degree.
  • noun Music A division of some pipe organs, similar in sound to the great but smaller and less powerful.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Specifically, noting an oiling or lubricating device in which the oil is made to flow by pressure, due either to gravity or to pumping.
  • Laid down as a proposition; affirmed; stated; express: as, a positive declaration.
  • Of an affirmative nature; possessing definite characters of its own; of a kind to excite sensation or be otherwise directly experienced; not negative. Thus, light is positive, darkness negative; man is positive, nonman negative.
  • Arbitrarily laid down; determined by declaration, enactment, or convention, and not by nature: opposed to natural.
  • Imperative; laid down as a command to be followed without question or discretion: as, positive orders.
  • Unquestionable; indubitable; certain; hence, experiential.
  • Confident; fully assured.
  • Over-confident in opinion and assertion; dogmatic.
  • Actually or really officiating or discharging the duties of an office.
  • Not reversed.
  • Not comparative.
  • noun That which settles by absolute appointment.
  • noun That which is capable of being affirmed; reality.
  • noun In grammar, the positive degree.

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English, having a specified quality, from Old French positif, from Latin positīvus, formally laid down, from positus, past participle of pōnere, to place; see apo- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old (and modern) French positif, or Latin positivus, from the past participle stem of ponere ("to place"). Compare posit.

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Examples

  • A smart publisher IMO is one that knows that any talk about a book is a positive thing, and that an honest review site is a site from which an honest *positive* review is worth having, too.

    Dear Author: Romance Novel Reviews, Industry News, and Commentary » Excuse Our (my) Mess » Print 2007

  • This Greenian, autonomy-based, conception of positive freedom is often run together with a very different notion of ˜positive™ freedom: freedom as effective power to act or to pursue one's ends.

    Liberalism Gaus, Gerald 2007

  • A smart publisher IMO is one that knows that any talk about a book is a positive thing, and that an honest review site is a site from which an honest *positive* review is worth having, too.

    Excuse Our (my) Mess 2007

  • And the magnetism of the whole circuit between the positive and the negative posts is in its _least_ volume next to the _positive post_, and in

    A Newly Discovered System of Electrical Medication Daniel Clark

  • So it is still true that on the negative half of the circuit, the _negative_ qualities _diminish_ as we advance towards the central point just as on the positive half, the _positive_ qualities diminish regularly towards the central point, as stated above.

    A Newly Discovered System of Electrical Medication Daniel Clark

  • And if this whole magnet be more and more positive, by regular degrees through all the sections, from its negative to its positive end or pole, then the nearer any given part of it, say the _second section_ -- the patient's person, may be to its positive pole in the negative post, so much the more _positive_ that section or part will be.

    A Newly Discovered System of Electrical Medication Daniel Clark

  • The question is whether there are any positive attributes which may be applied to God as actually denoting his essence -- hence _positive essential_ attributes.

    A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy Isaac Husik 1907

  • The responses now undergo a change from positive to _less positive_; fatigue, that is to say, appears.

    Response in the Living and Non-Living Jagadis Chandra Bose 1897

  • Under continued stimulation, they increase in the same direction as in the last case, that is to say, from less positive to _more positive_, being the reverse of fatigue.

    Response in the Living and Non-Living Jagadis Chandra Bose 1897

  • But the hypothesis that history _might_ contain facts which it does _not_ contain, is no positive evidence for the truth of those facts; and this is the present question; what is the _positive_ evidence that the Church ever believed or taught a Gospel substantially different from that which her extant documents contain?

    Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) The Turks in Their Relation to Europe; Marcus Tullius Cicero; Apollonius of Tyana; Primitive Christianity John Henry Newman 1845

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