false negative

noun

plural false negatives

: a person or test result that is incorrectly classified as negative (as for the presence of a health condition) because of imperfect testing methods or procedures

A false negative, in medical lingo, is a screening test that says "no cancer" when all the while a cancer is, in fact, growing undetected.

—Robin Marantz Henig

—often hyphenated when used before another noun

a false-negative rate of 5%

… only 4 of 31 tears found on arthroscopic evaluation were missed prospectively by MRI, and two of these false-negative results were found retrospectively to be due to observer error rather than failure of the MRI system to image the tear.

—Peter D. Franklin et al.

compare false positive

Examples of false negative in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Black clients were clearly more vulnerable than the survey detected; Latino clients were also 3 percent more likely than white clients to get false negatives. —Carly Stern, Vox, 6 Dec. 2024

And tests may give false negatives if taken too early. —Erika Edwards, NBC News, 27 June 2024

Samsara’s Welbourne asserts that his company has good reason to be confident that its AI models are solid and will avoid false positives or false negatives that would diminish the tool’s usefulness to drivers and fleet operators. —IEEE Spectrum, 26 Nov. 2024

This can result in more false negatives and delays in diagnosis. —Sandra Rose Salathe, Flow Space, 23 Oct. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1916, in the meaning defined above

Medical Definition

false negative

noun

: a person or test result that is incorrectly classified as negative (as for the presence of a health condition) because of imperfect testing methods or procedures

"The addition of the lateral chest radiograph to the frontal view did not improve the diagnostic accuracy of pediatric emergency physicians," he [Dr. Lynch] concluded, "and it may also increase the percentage of false negatives."

—Terry Murray, Medical Post

Previous studies of sentinel nodes have revealed some false negatives (i.e., women with a normal sentinel node who nonetheless had other axillary node metastases revealed on total dissection).

—Bill Zepf, American Family Physician

… testing for heterophile antibodies was negative, but false negative results are well recognized.

—Lindley A. Barbee et al., The New England Journal of Medicine

—often hyphenated when used before another noun

false-negative results

… any false-negative smears would again underestimate the prevalence of abnormal test results.

—Jeanne Mandelblatt et al., The Journal of the American Medical Association

compare false positive