Meaning & use
negative effect
Last updated
Meaning
nouncountable
A harmful or unwelcome result that something has on a person, thing or situation.
Grammar: Countable, usually followed by on: a negative effect on health.
Patterns
- a negative effect on something
- have a negative effect
Too little sleep can have a negative effect on your concentration.
The new tax had a negative effect on small shops.
Researchers found no negative effects from the medicine after two years.
Word forms
| plural | negative effects |
|---|
Common combinations
- have a negative effect on
- Noise can have a negative effect on learning.
- a serious negative effect
- The drought had a serious negative effect on crop yields.
- reduce the negative effects
- Planting trees can reduce the negative effects of pollution.
- long-term negative effects
- Doctors studied the long-term negative effects of the treatment.
- avoid negative effects
- Take the tablets with food to avoid negative effects.
Synonyms and how they differ
- adverse effect
- Adverse effect is more formal and common in medicine, while negative effect works in everyday talk.
- harmful effect
- Harmful effect stresses actual damage, whereas negative effect can mean a milder drawback.
- drawback
- A drawback is a disadvantage of a plan or object, not an outcome that happens to something else.
- downside
- Downside is informal and refers to the bad side of a choice rather than a specific consequence.
Opposites
Word family
Commonly confused: negative effect or affect?
negative effect vs affect
Affect is usually a verb meaning to influence, as in stress can affect sleep. Effect is the noun for the result.
Practice
Skipping breakfast had a ___ on her energy during the morning.
Choose one answer.
Effect is the noun needed after had a, and negative is the adjective. Affect is mainly a verb, and negatively is an adverb, so they do not fit this pattern.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “negative effect”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.