The dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy ( RAE ) recognizes more than a dozen meanings of negative , a term that comes from the Latin word negatīvus . The first meaning refers to that linked to denial : the act and result of denying or rejecting, or the lack or absence of something.
Negative can refer to the nonexistence or lack of some element or substance . Suppose the police raid a home in search of the revolver with which a crime was committed. If after the procedure the weapon in question is not found, it will be said that the result of the search was negative .
Likewise, an anti-doping or anti-doping test that is negative is a test where no prohibited substance was found. On the other hand, in a positive analysis some illegal drugs were found.
A negative individual , on the other hand, is pessimistic and tends to only observe what is problematic. He who, about to go on vacation , talks about the risks of accidents when traveling, comments on the possibility of bad weather in the coming days and regrets the possibility that he will not have enough money to enjoy his destination. , can be mentioned as someone negative.
Something negative is also harmful or harmful . For example : “Smoking is a negative habit that causes multiple health problems,” “Marcos has this negative habit of eating in a hurry,” “The fact that the owner of the company is accused of committing gender violence against his wife is negative for the company.” ” .
A negative number , meanwhile, has a value less than zero and affects positive numbers in different ways depending on the operations performed with them. First of all, it is worth mentioning that with zero it can have a relationship identical to that of positives: if you multiply -4 by 0, it gives 0, just like 4 by 0; Dividing a negative number or a positive number by zero produces the same lack of result, since zero does not have a multiplicative inverse (a number that gives 1 as a result of multiplying it by it; for example: 1/5 x 5 = 1).
In the operation of addition, on the other hand, a negative number plus a positive one produces an effect equivalent to subtraction, since its "inverse" nature, so to speak, tends to take it towards zero. For example: while 4 + 3 is 7, 4 + -3 is 1, because adding a negative is equal to subtracting its modulus (also known as absolute value , the modulus of a real number is the value ignoring its sign, and is always positive).
Multiplication and division between negative and positive numbers have similar effects. At first, if we face one of these operations we must ignore the sign and only apply it to the result; If it is a simple account, between a negative and a positive, the result will always be negative. Let's look at two simple examples: -3 x 6 = -18; -16 / 4 = -4. If all the numbers were positive, the results would be 16 and 4 , respectively.
A photographic negative , finally, is an image that reproduces dark and light in an inverted manner with respect to reality . In the case of traditional photography, which we can currently call "analog", as opposed to "digital", the negative is the first way in which we approach the result of our shots, since we depend on the known process as developed to appreciate the photographs as we conceive them in our imagination. On the other hand, the negative is an effect that we can achieve by using a digital image editing tool for aesthetic purposes or to cause a certain impact in a design work.