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affirmative

adjectivenouninterjectioncommon in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//əˈfɜːmətɪv//
  • United States//əˈfɝməɾɪv//

pertaining to truth; asserting that something is; affirming

adjective

  1. 1

    pertaining to truth; asserting that something is; affirming

    an affirmative answer

  2. 2

    pertaining to any assertion or active confirmation that favors a particular result

  3. 3

    positive

    an affirmative vote

  4. 4

    Confirmative; ratifying.

    an act affirmative of common law

  5. 5

    Dogmatic.

    Lyſicles vvas a little diſconcerted by the affirmative air of Crito; but after a ſhort pauſe replied briskly, […]

  6. 6

    Expressing the agreement of the two terms of a proposition.

  7. 7

    positive; not negative

Etymology

From Middle English affirmative, affirmatyve, from Old French affirmatif, from Latin affirmativus, from affirmare (“to assert”).

noun

  1. 1

    Yes; an answer that shows agreement or acceptance.

    That’s an affirmative Houston, the space shuttle has lost the secondary thrusters.

    10-4 good buddy. That’s an affirmative—the tractor trailer is in the ditch at the side of the highway.

  2. 2

    An answer that shows agreement or acceptance.

  3. 3

    obsoleteAn assertion.

    that every hare is both male and female, beside the vulgar opinion, was the affirmative of Archelaus, of Plutarch, Philostratus, and many more.

interjection

  1. 1

    Yes.

  2. 2

    Yes; true; correct.

Forms

plural
affirmatives
comparative
more affirmative
superlative
most affirmative
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).