All 3 Uses of
positive
in
Crediting Poetry by Seamus Heaney
- If there was something ominous in the newscaster's tones, there was something torpid about our understanding of what was at stake; and if there was something culpable about such political ignorance in that time and place, there was something positive about the security I inhabited as a result of it.†
(definition 1) *
- As writers and readers, as sinners and citizens, our realism and our aesthetic sense make us wary of crediting the positive note.†
*
Uses with a very rare meaning:
- And when this intellectual predisposition co-exists with the actualities of Ulster and Israel and Bosnia and Rwanda and a host of other wounded spots on the face of the earth, the inclination is not only not to credit human nature with much constructive potential but not to credit anything too positive in the work of art.†
(definition 2) *
Definitions:
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(1) (positive as in: had a positive effect) good or beneficial
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(2) (meaning too rare to warrant focus) See a comprehensive dictionary for less common meanings of positive including some in the fields of electricity, physics, chemistry, medicine, philosophy, and grammar. Note that most all senses of positive indicate that something is good or present.
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(positive as in: I'm absolutely positive!) certain (having no doubt; or used for emphasis)