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  false positive

  noun

  a result in a medical test that wrongly indicates the presence of the condition being tested for

false-positive

American  

[fawls-poz-i-tiv] / ˈfɔlsˈpɒz ɪ tɪv /

noun

1. Medicine/Medical.

   1. a test result that is incorrect because the test indicated a condition or finding that does not exist.

      a false-positive for syphilis.

   2. a person who receives this test result.

2. 1. any screening test result that incorrectly detected or classified a person or thing.

      A false-positive at the airport could cause you to miss your flight.

   2. a person or thing identified by such a test.

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adjective

1. pertaining to or being a false-positive.

   The test has a false-positive rate of 4%.

false positive British  

noun

1. a result in a medical test that wrongly indicates the presence of the condition being tested for

2. a person from whom such a result is obtained

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Etymology

Origin of false-positive

First recorded in 1910–15

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

false-positive false positive

“An individual signal is not all that informative, but when they fire consistently over weeks or even months, the false-positive rate tends to go down,” Goepfert said.

From MarketWatch ● Aug. 15, 2026

Finding a false-positive was not unordinary, Diez-Gonzalez said.

From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2026

Of course, so much of what’s otherwise known points a finger directly back at Taylor Farms, false-positive atom splitting notwithstanding, and there’s only so much the company can do to deflect.

From Slate ● Jul. 22, 2026

Pangram claims a false-positive rate of 1 in 10,000 for all forms of writing and 1 in 100,000 for news articles, based on a test of content published before ChatGPT’s 2022 debut.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 3, 2026

"The reading workload is further compounded when screening programs employ double reading to improve cancer detection and decrease false-positive recalls."

From Science Daily ● Jun. 4, 2024

However, FDA officials said the false positive did not change the course of the outbreak investigation, “or the overwhelming epidemiological data supporting the ... voluntary recall by Taylor Farms.”

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 12, 2026

Unless you go through it, it can be difficult to understand how destabilizing a false positive can be.

From Slate ● Sep. 9, 2026

In this group, it detected nearly 80% of liver cancer cases at a specificity slightly above 90%, corresponding to a false positive rate of less than 10%.

From Science Daily ● Aug. 11, 2026

The FDA, however, doubled down on the severity of the investigation, saying in an X post that the false positive doesn’t change “the overwhelming epidemiological data supporting the current voluntary recall by Taylor Farms.”

From Salon ● Jul. 25, 2026

The calculation is similar to the one on false positive results in drug testing, and, like it, demonstrates that misinterpreting fractions can be a matter of life and death.

From "Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences" by John Allen Paulos