Today's word is negativish, which I believed that I had coined myself. Thank you to Katy for encouraging me to promote it. In fact, like many words which obviously need to exist, there are almost a thousand uses of this word - admittedly half of them Albanian - thrown up in a Google search already. Negativish means somewhat, rather, fairly, more or less, negative. It can be applied to an attitude or comment or action or work of art.
It is quite curious, however, that some users of the word insert a hyphen. Others put inverted commas around it. Or use italics. Why? I guess because they are uncertain that the word is right.
Use of the word can be illustrated -
"there's one negativish review (3 stars)"
"So why should a right to negative liberty be a negative right, i.e. a right that itself has something 'negativish' about it?"
"I have NOT got NO money" is about as "double negativish" as it gets."
And an Albanian example, where negativish has the same sense as negatively in English.
"Sidomos ka ndikuar negativish interview i Tom Cruise me Oprah Whinfrey ku Cruise eshte sjellur shume quditshem dhe si shkak tash perqeshet ..."
Derek Whitehead
About Me
- Derek Whitehead
- Melbourne, Australia
- Derek is an Adjunct Professor at Swinburne University of Technology and at RMIT University, and the Chair of the Australian Digital Alliance. He retired in January 2015 as CIO and Director, Information Technology Services at Swinburne, and has had a long career as a librarian and copyright officer. He has had a long engagement with the internet since his involvement in the establishment of the pioneering Vicnet service in 1994. Derek was awarded an OAM in 2002 for services to libraries and the internet.
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