alpha privative

The prefix a- or an- before vowels, used in Greek and in English words borrowed from Greek to express absence or negation.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

alpha privative

(Linguistics) (in Greek grammar) the letter alpha (or an- before vowels) used as a negative or privative prefix. It appears in English words derived from Greek, as in atheist, anaesthetic

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

al′pha priv′ative

the prefix a- or, before a vowel, an-, used in Greek and English to express negation or absence.

[1580–90]

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Noun

alpha privative - the negative prefix a- or un-

prefix - an affix that is added in front of the word

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References in periodicals archive ?

In early Christian Platonic testimony, the negations express profound faith, the alpha privatives of God: "immortal, invisible, immutable, impassive, and unchangeable." Andre-Jean Festugiere said of the philosophers, "the supreme object of knowledge, the final degree of our metaphysical investigations, the term on which all the rest depends, is an object which defies definition, and hence cannot be named.