privative

Privative is a term used across philosophy, linguistics, and semantics to denote absence, lack, or negation of a property. Etymologically it derives from Latin privatus, meaning deprived or separated. In general use, it describes a relation or morphological marker that indicates that a feature is missing rather than present.

In philosophy and metaphysics, privation refers to the absence of a substantial property that would normally be present. The classical privation theory, notably associated with Aristotle and later developed by Scholastic thinkers such as Aquinas, treats evil as a privation of good rather than as a positive entity. Under this view, a thing is evil not because it has a positive evil quality, but because it lacks a corresponding good. Examples frequently cited include blindness as the privation of sight or deformity as a privation of physical integrity.

In linguistics, privative describes a morphological or lexical device that marks negation or deprivation of a property. Privative affixes or particles typically attach to a word to produce a term that expresses the absence of a feature, such as English prefixes like un-, in-, or non- (unhappy, invisible, nonessential). It is important to distinguish privative negation from other kinds of negation or from intensification; languages vary in how clearly privative forms map onto semantic absence.

In semantics, privation contrasts with the positive state by focusing on what is lacking rather than what is present. The concept also appears in structural descriptions of grammar and logic, where it helps classify types of negation or deprivation beyond simple opposition.