How to Use negation in a Sentence

negation

noun
  • For some fliers, the stillness is accompanied by a sense of negation of the self.
    — Ben Taub, The New Yorker, 3 Oct. 2022
  • There was no pain or fear, only a steely negation of reality.
    — Yiyun Li, New Yorker, 1 Mar. 2026
  • And Google’s Periscope can be fooled by simple typos and negations.
    — Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, 14 Sep. 2017
  • Spore is a world unto itself, where destruction (negation) forms a new, round world.
    — Rebecca Horne, Discover Magazine, 12 Oct. 2012
  • But refusing to give in to a politics of negation, despite it all, this is punk rock.
    — J.j. Gould, The New Republic, 22 Mar. 2018
  • The negation as a prefix signals this part of our identity is never enough.
    — Ching Ching Tan, CNN, 18 Dec. 2021
  • For Levé, the point of writing is not just expression but also its negation.
    — David L. Ulin, WSJ, 19 Aug. 2022
  • King Lear is among the most complete statements of negation in English.
    — David Yezzi, WSJ, 20 Apr. 2018
  • If a property belongs to the set, its negation is not included.
    — Manon Bischoff, Scientific American, 4 Oct. 2022
  • But the negation of the right of Jews to a refuge in Israel is broader and goes back further.
    — WSJ, 6 Feb. 2022
  • His focus is black history itself, its twists, its turns, its triumphs and self-negations.
    — Zadie Smith, The New Yorker, 26 Nov. 2019
  • One option is to add an extra layer of language processing to negation.
    — Max G. Levy, Quanta Magazine, 12 May 2023
  • She was used to asserting herself through negation, absence, and will finally feel alive.
    — Holly Jones, Variety, 25 Apr. 2022
  • But the simple idea of not ever drinking again seemed impossible, a grim negation of all convivial life.
    — Maggie Nelson, Harper's Magazine, 28 Sep. 2021
  • This is poetry of the will written by the will to celebrate the will even in its perversity and negation.
    — The New Yorker, 30 May 2022
  • Had Logan meant to underline Kendall’s name for emphasis or cross it out in an act of negation?
    — Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times, 3 Sep. 2023
  • But here, there’s a deeper reason Gay might be pulled toward negation and substitution.
    — Katy Waldman, Slate Magazine, 26 June 2017
  • Here the ideal self is everything the wife is not, all the qualities summoned, via negation, by her brutal dismissal.
    — Merve Emre, The New York Review of Books, 6 Apr. 2022
  • The culture of negation inspires a taste for nothingness and glorifies numbness.
    — New York Times, 19 Jan. 2021
  • Archetypes are the refined cousins of stereotypes, the problem of stereotypes being their negation of complexity.
    — Michael Kimmage, Foreign Affairs, 25 Jan. 2024
  • The denial of self, the pursuit of originality and the negation of impulses.
    — Washington Post, 29 Sep. 2021
  • Trump's lawyers and Mueller's team are in the midst of negations over what topics an interview with the President could focus on.
    — Dan Merica, CNN, 22 Mar. 2018
  • His vehement negation notwithstanding, the little girl stays resolute in her claims.
    — Carlos Aguilar, Variety, 11 Dec. 2025
  • How are black girls supposed to grow up to be black women in love with themselves in a country built on the structural negation of black women’s humanity and personhood?
    — Brittney Cooper, Time, 15 Mar. 2018
  • To build a world in the fullest sense of the word requires an almost Buddha-like commitment to self-negation and indeterminacy.
    — Jonathon Keats, Forbes, 8 June 2022
  • Replacing Obama is not enough—Trump has made the negation of Obama’s legacy the foundation of his own.
    — Danielle Jackson, Longreads, 18 Sep. 2017
  • Replacing Obama is not enough—Trump has made the negation of Obama’s legacy the foundation of his own.
    — Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic, 7 Sep. 2017
  • Removed the effect that increased damage negation upon re-summoning condemned.
    — Oliver Brandt, MSNBC Newsweek, 10 Sep. 2025
  • The result felt less like an homage than a radical modernist reappraisal of the Bachian ethos — deconstruction carried to negation.
    — John Von Rhein, chicagotribune.com, 29 Apr. 2018
  • Hegel redefined the dialectic as a process of assertion, negation, and synthesis that gathers force through history.
    — Alex Ross, New Yorker, 15 June 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'negation.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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