8 uses
(click/touch triangles for details)
1 —2 uses as in:
I'm absolutely positive!
Definition
certain (having no doubt; or used for emphasis)
- Whatever was not problematical and suspected about this young man—for example, a certain showiness as to foreign ideas, and a disposition to unsettle what had been settled and forgotten by his elders—was positively unwelcome to a physician whose standing had been fixed thirty years before by a treatise on Meningitis, of which at least one copy marked "own" was bound in calf.Book 2 — Old and Young (33% in)
positively = absolutely (used for emphasis)
- But he was positively obtrusive at this moment, and his dimpled hands were quite disagreeable.Book 1 — Miss Brooke (20% in)
There are no more uses of "positive" flagged with this meaning in Middlemarch.
Typical Usage
(best examples)
? —6 uses
exact meaning not specified
- Were I assured that this is the utmost I can reasonably expect, that assurance would be a useful circumscription of my attempts, and a guide in both the positive and negative determination of my course.Book 4 — Three Love Problems (95% in)
- And since Mary had been keeping Mr. Featherstone's house, Mrs. Vincy's want of liking for the Garths had been converted into something more positive, by alarm lest Fred should engage himself to this plain girl, whose parents "lived in such a small way."Book 3 — Waiting for Death (4% in)
- "Positively," exclaimed Mrs. Cadwallader, "there is a new face come out from behind that broad man queerer than any of them: a little round head with bulging eyes—a sort of frog-face—do look.Book 4 — Three Love Problems (5% in)
- Not for one moment did Mr. Casaubon suspect Dorothea of any doubleness: he had no suspicions of her, but he had (what was little less uncomfortable) the positive knowledge that her tendency to form opinions about her husband's conduct was accompanied with a disposition to regard Will Ladislaw favorably and be influenced by what he said.Book 4 — Three Love Problems (52% in)
- I say that there never was a meaner, more ungentlemanly action than this—a codicil of this sort to a will which he made at the time of his marriage with the knowledge and reliance of her family—a positive insult to Dorothea!Book 5 — The Dead Hand (53% in)
- ...Toller and Mr. Wrench, expressly to hold a close discussion as to the probabilities of Raffles's illness, reciting to them all the particulars which had been gathered from Mrs. Abel in connection with Lydgate's certificate, that the death was due to delirium tremens; and the medical gentlemen, who all stood undisturbedly on the old paths in relation to this disease, declared that they could see nothing in these particulars which could be transformed into a positive ground of suspicion.Book 7 — Two Temptations (88% in)
There are no more uses of "positive" in Middlemarch.
Typical Usage
(best examples)