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Positiveness   Listen
Positiveness

noun
1.
The character of the positive electric pole.  Synonym: positivity.
2.
A quality or state characterized by certainty or acceptance or affirmation and dogmatic assertiveness.  Synonyms: positivism, positivity.
3.
The quality of being encouraging or promising of a successful outcome.  Synonyms: advantageousness, favorableness, favourableness, positivity, profitableness.
4.
An amount greater than zero.  Synonym: positivity.
5.
The quality of being undeniable and not worth arguing about.  Synonyms: incontrovertibility, incontrovertibleness, positivity.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Positiveness" Quotes from Famous Books



... the taproom to consult the driver of the Carlisle coach, who was taking a glass before going to bed—his hours of work being in the night and his hours of rest being in the day. That authority recommended, with the utmost positiveness of advice, that Robbie should take a seat in his coach when he left for ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... underwent a sort of examination at my master's store, and it was evident to my mind, that Master{229} Thomas suspected the truthfulness of the evidence upon which they had acted in arresting us; and that he only affected, to some extent, the positiveness with which he asserted our guilt. There was nothing said by any of our company, which could, in any manner, prejudice our cause; and there was hope, yet, that we should be able to return to our homes—if for nothing else, at least to find out the guilty man or woman ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... putting as strong a note of positiveness into his voice as possible, for he now began to suspect to whom the notebook had belonged. "The desk contained only personal and a little business correspondence. Morgan and I examined all the signatures. If you looked that correspondence over, ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne

... in the case of an old maiden lady, who, having brought a cart-load of personal necessaries and comforts, which were positively essential to her continued existence, and having been firmly refused the transmission of the greater part of them, declared with the utmost positiveness that the lord chancellor had himself expressly informed all the guests at the banquet that each was at liberty to take an unlimited quantity of goods; nor could any explanation convince her of her mistake. Let them say what they pleased, she had heard the word unlimited ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson

... you, that have done me some service. To tell you plainly, Major Ab. denotes thy greater ability, and Major Will. thy greater willingness to carry on this lawsuit. It was but reasonable thou shouldst pay both for thy power and thy positiveness. ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot

... years has been more discussed than that of their influence upon prices. Opinions have differed widely, the opponents of the Combinations usually believing that they have increased prices materially, their defenders claiming with equal positiveness that they have reduced prices. Differences of opinion have probably originated largely from the fact that the subject has been approached from different points of view; and mistakes have also, in many cases, been made through lack of ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee

... of the wise gods. His stride is the stride of a giant, from the sentimental beauty of the picture of Marie Antoinette at Versailles, or the red horror of the tale of Debi Sing in Rungpore, to the learning, positiveness, and cool judicial mastery of the Report on the Lords' Journals (1794), which Philip Francis, no mean judge, declared on the whole to be the "most eminent and extraordinary" of all his productions. Even in the coolest and dryest of his pieces, there is ...
— Burke • John Morley

... of selfishness which leads at last to looseness of life and general demoralisation. And it is possible for the scientific instincts, when developed at the expense of the aesthetic and the sympathetic, to evolve a hard, unemotional type of character which is self-centred and selfish owing to its positiveness and lack of imagination. But these are instances of inharmonious growth. When growth is harmonious and many-sided, it leads of necessity to out-growth, to escape from self. For the expansive instincts are so many ways of escape ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... herself so;—but no one, I believe, ever experiences any shock at Romeo's forgetting his Rosaline, who had been a mere name for the yearning of his youthful imagination, and rushing into his passion for Juliet. Rosaline was a mere creation of his fancy; and we should remark the boastful positiveness of Romeo in a love of his own making, which is never shown where love is really near ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge

... to Captain Downs's query did not sound human. It was a sort of muffled wail, but there was no mistaking its positiveness. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day

... discerns two main streams of influence. On the one hand, there is the influence of the original Puritans—whether of New England or of the South—, who came to the New World with a ready-made philosophy of the utmost clarity, positiveness and inclusiveness of scope, and who attained to such a position of political and intellectual leadership that they were able to force it almost unchanged upon the whole population, and to endow it with such vitality that it successfully ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... changed,—upon the weather, the hard winter, the prospects of the Cause, a criticism upon the commander-in-chief's management of affairs, the attitude of Congress, etc., between Mr. Blossom and the count; characterized, I hardly need say, by that positiveness of opinion that distinguishes the unprofessional. In another part of the room, it so chanced that Mistress Thankful and the baron were talking about themselves; the assembly balls; who was the prettiest woman in Morristown; and whether Gen. Washington's attentions ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte

... to understand that he did not believe that his nation were the descendants of Attila and his people, though he acknowledged that they were probably of the same race. Attila and his armies, he said, came and disappeared in a very mysterious manner, and that nothing could be said with positiveness about them; that the people now known as Magyars first made their appearance in Muscovy in the year 884, under the leadership of Almus, called so from Alom, which, in the Hungarian language, signifies a dream; his mother, before his birth, ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... my mind," he said, one evening, with that smiling positiveness which is so aggravating: "I am very much inclined to believe that Ben ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr

... decide within yourself whether he is worth the sacrifice," Grace answered with deep positiveness. Privately she did not consider that a young man, who took it upon himself to interfere with an enterprise which benefited many and harmed none, was quite worthy of her generous little comrade. "It's like this, Arline. You ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower

... conformity with their obligations and honest convictions of duty in bringing in their verdicts. They had sworn to decide according to the law and the evidence. The law under which they were required to act was laid down with absolute positiveness by the Court. They were bound to receive it, and to take and weigh the evidence that was admitted; and to their minds it was clear, decisive, and overwhelming, offered by persons of good character, and confirmed by a great number of confessions. If it had been within ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... white, delicate, aged face, with a high forehead, a small mouth, and a pair of cold blue eyes which had kept much of the freshness of youth. Madame de Bellegarde looked hard at him, and returned his hand-shake with a sort of British positiveness which reminded him that she was the daughter of the Earl of St. Dunstan's. Her daughter-in-law stopped playing and gave him an agreeable smile. Newman sat down and looked about him, while Valentin went and kissed the hand of the ...
— The American • Henry James

... elements of the population. A question of profound interest in connection with this aspect of Prohibition demands a few words of discussion. It has been asserted with great confidence, and denied with equal positiveness, that Prohibition has had the effect of very greatly increasing the addiction to narcotic drugs. I confess my inability to decide, from any data that have come to my attention, which of these contradictory ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin

... State! That is to say: war was certain from the beginning; the Free Staters were equally certain to be neutral; but since they were not neutral, responsibility for the war was theirs, and theirs only. Perhaps it was; but how was the view to be reconciled with our previous positiveness to the contrary? As a fact, few were conscious of any weakness in their way of laying down the law, and they ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... evil, at its highest? Here are the rough crust over a kindly heart, the explosive temper, the arrogance, the insular narrowness, the want of sympathy and insight, the rudeness of perception, the positiveness, the overbearing bluster, the strong deep-seated religious principle, and every other characteristic of the cruder, rougher John Bull who was the great grandfather of ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... equal positiveness. "And a fine fellow he was, too, and one of the best for cheering of us up with his stories and songs; and not above a bit of a prayer, too, when the worst came to the ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... Neither did he translate Nicomachus, although he embodied many of the ideas of the Greek writer in his own arithmetic. Gibbon follows Cassiodorus in these statements in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. xxxix. Martin pointed out with positiveness the similarity of the first book of Boethius to the first five books of Nicomachus. [Les signes numeraux etc., reprint, ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith

... useful, in discovering to us the weakness of our own understanding. If it does not make us knowing, it may make us modest. If it does not preserve us from error, it may at least from the spirit of error; and may make us cautious of pronouncing with positiveness or with haste, when so much labour may end in ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... outsider it looks as if the babes and sucklings who have no experience and no precedents would have to save China—if. And it's an awful if. It's not surprising that the Japanese with their energy and positiveness feel that they ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey

... successful. If, in addition to the point of general size and contour, he had found upon the arm a peculiar hairy appearance which he had observed upon the living Marie, his opinion might have been justly strengthened; and the increase of positiveness might well have been in the ratio of the peculiarity, or unusualness, of the hairy mark. If, the feet of Marie being small, those of the corpse were also small, the increase of probability that the body was that of Marie would not be an increase in a ratio merely arithmetical, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... Barndollar was far superior to the Reinfelters in culture and in knowledge of the world, he did not interest Brent as much as they did. The positiveness of their beliefs was a special source of wonder to him. From the father, who had no doubt about the existence of ghosts, to the little boy, who firmly believed in the reality of Belsnickel,—hides, horns, and all,—they were the most frankly credulous people he had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various

... some one will say, "We knew all that before. But how are we going to quit worrying? That's what we need to be told." Well, I can tell you. Sometimes a man speaks cautiously, but here one can speak with great positiveness. There are three simple rules how not to worry. They are infallible. I heard of a society whose purpose it was to cure worry. There were thirty-seven rules, I think. It would worry some of us a good bit to memorize any such length of instruction ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon

... articles soon took on interest from the positiveness of the opinions discussed; but so thoroughly had Colonel Roosevelt covered his tracks that, although he wrote in his usual style, in not a single instance was his name connected with the department. Lyman Abbott was the favorite "guess" at first; then after various ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... Robin answered with amazing positiveness. "No, I hated his eyes. They were not true eyes. But—I like Dale—lots." And just here, for the second time, she locked her lips on her precious secret for Dale must never know that she remembered him; all that belonged to her childhood. Beryl might laugh, ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott

... But if we realize to how large an extent woman is a sexual organism, and how diffused and even unconscious the sexual impulses may be, it becomes very difficult to assert that she has never shown any manifestation of the sexual impulse. All we can assert with some degree of positiveness in some cases is that she has not manifested sexual gratification, more particularly as shown by the occurrence of the orgasm, but that is very far indeed from warranting us to assert that she never will experience ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... and the positiveness of Frank, displeased your brother. Sir Arthur happened to return; and he went to him, scarcely taking time for first compliments, but asking whether it were true that I was not well. Sir Arthur was surprised: he knew nothing of it! I had not ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft

... the loss of the papers which left him helpless to openly resist the claim being made upon him on behalf of the mysterious Phyllis. His only hope, therefore, lay in recovering these; but, with time limited, he had been sent back on a wild goose chase, while Keith alone knew, with any degree of positiveness, where those documents really were. Hawley certainly had them in his possession the day before, for he had taken them to Miss Maclaire to thus convince her as to the truth of his statements. And Hawley was still in Sheridan. However, it was not likely the man would ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... General," I asserted with equal positiveness, "but I have myself seen their bodies. So has Mr. Gibson, the secretary of the American Legation in Brussels, who was present during ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell

... is, they admit, a desirable accomplishment if it can be gained without too much cost, but not to be allowed the place of more valuable knowledge. A typical modern father, writing not long ago to a modern educator, after giving with equal positiveness the subjects that his boy must have and must not have included in his course of study, added by way of concession, "The boy might, if he has time, ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... proud to be master at home; he has few emotions, and the emotion caused by the exertion of command, becomes agreeable and necessary to him. Thus many of the same causes which make a young man a pleasant companion abroad, tend naturally to make him a tyrant at home. This perversity and positiveness of temper, ultimately arise from the want of occupation, and from deficient energy of mind. We may guard against these evils by education: when we see a playful, active child, we have little fear of his temper. "Oh, he will ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... opinion. "If there was a marriage," said I, "show me the marriage certificate, and I will acknowledge the marriage, and acknowledge the child;" but they could not, and I knew they could not; and I kept the estate for my darling boy,' cried the old gentleman, with the exultation of successful positiveness again appearing strong in his physiognomy; but suddenly changing and relaxing, his countenance fell, and he added, 'But now I have no darling boy. What use all!—all must go to the heir-at-law, or I must will it to a stranger—a lady of ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth

... common error for say, state, and the like. It means "to declare," "to affirm," or "to assert with the idea of positiveness" and is not applicable to ordinary statements not ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton

... symptoms off with great volubility. The Count looked at him with open-eyed wonder. The professor was not less astonished at the positiveness with which Dr. Jones thus detailed the Count's symptoms without any previous knowledge ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman

... This was news to him. It must have occurred while he was on the high seas. The verbose positiveness of the doctor did not permit any doubt whatever.... Besides, that lady ought to know better than those who lived on ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... clearly shown to have been the direct cause of its failure, silence would be a crime. When Lord Wolseley told the soldiers at Korti on their return from Metemmah, "It was not your fault that Gordon has perished and Khartoum fallen," the positiveness of his assurance may have been derived from the inner conviction of ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... sufficient positiveness that I will finish the book at no particular date; that I will not hurry it; that I will not hurry myself; that I will take things easy and comfortably—write when I choose to write, leave it alone when I do so prefer... ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... inflammation, stricture and twisting or distortion of the seminal ducts, and hence sterility or barrenness. In such especially are the remarkable effects of the Civiale Treatment the most noticeable. We can say with positiveness, and prove it by case after case, that by no other method can such rapid and perfect restoration of the organs to a natural and healthy state be obtained as by this. Some of the very worst and apparently most hopeless cases that we have had—cases that have gone from one physician ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown

... and into the mind of the other person whom you wish to influence. Sometimes, if the person is quite negative to you, this is a very simple and easy matter; but where the person is near your own degree of psychic positiveness you will have to assert your psychic superiority to him, and get the psychic "upper hand" before you can proceed further. This is accomplished by throwing into your psychic atmosphere some particularly strong mental statements accompanied by ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi

... should not be mistaken for the substance. Positiveness of manner, and redoubtable inner conviction stem only from the mastery of superior knowledge, and this last is the fruit of application, preparation, thoroughness and the willingness to struggle ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense



Words linked to "Positiveness" :   positivity, amount, unfavorableness, advantage, self-assertiveness, sign, indisputability, unquestionableness, profitableness, positive, favorableness, incontrovertibility, advantageousness, quality, negativeness, polarity, negativity, assertiveness, indubitability, unquestionability, incontrovertibleness, vantage, positivism, auspiciousness, propitiousness, favourableness



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