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I have read in some dictionaries that, when referring to the weather, the “–” sign is spoken as “minus” — for example “minus 10 degrees”.

Is “negative 10 degrees” also common and interchangeable with "minus"?

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  • This question isn't specific enough. I assume you just mean weather. It's used colloquially enough that I would say it is correct if your intent is to communicate the temperature. If your intent is to use proper terminology on a weather paper, perhaps you should stick to the professional minus.
    – BleepBloopOverflow
    Commented Jan 20, 2016 at 2:01
  • Note that "negative ten degrees" would be even more idiomatic than "minus ten degrees" if specifying, eg, the angle of the dive plane of an submarine.
    – Hot Licks
    Commented Jan 20, 2016 at 3:18
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    @Azor-Ahai Nonetheless, that is the common, standard way of saying it when referring to temperatures. Personally, I've never heard anyone describing the temperature with ‘negative X’, though I'm sure some people do say it that way.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Feb 23, 2017 at 8:30
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    @Azor-Ahai No specific sources as such, no—just my own experience with people from all over the English-speaking world. There could well be pockets where negative is more common, I've just never experienced one. This weatherman prefers negative, but does say that most people use minus; while this mathematician both agrees that most use minus and argues that's what it should be mathematically, anyway. Couldn't find anyone saying that most people say negative.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Feb 23, 2017 at 8:49
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    I live in a part of the US where the temperature pretty regularly dips below zero degrees Fahrenheit, and I've heard both minus X (degrees) and negative X (degrees). However, the most common usage is X below (zero).
    – 1006a
    Commented Mar 1, 2017 at 22:28

5 Answers 5

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Not common, but yes, interchangeable.

To my ear, "negative X degrees" is normal, and "minus X degrees" is a bit affected. However, Janus Bahs Jacquet is of the opinion that "minus X degrees" is normal worldwide.

I'm inclined to trust him. I have very little experience with sub-0 Farenheit temperatures. Seattle has literally never gone below 0 F. I lived in Vancouver where it hit negative Celsius temperatures maybe once or twice, so I'm by no means an expert.

I'm leaving out Google Ngram below because the question specifically requests "spoken as," which Google Ngram doesn't index at all. The Corpus of Contemporary American English and British National Corpus do have entries (in theory) for transcribed spoken English.

Newspaper Usage

However, my hypothesis of regional variation isn't correct though. The Vancouver Sun and the Seattle Times both prefer "minus."

Although both do infrequently use "negative X degrees," the Sun once in an AP wire about Iowa and one about Kam Chancellor's hands:

I'm forced to conclude "minus" is indeed the standard, and "negative" an acceptable variation.

Corpus of Contemporary American English

The CCAE has tokens from both written and spoken English. It has 140 hits for MINUS * DEGREES, from 2 to 459, in both numbers and words. On the other hand, it has only 13 hits for NEGATIVE * DEGREES. At some point, I'd like to map the hits to see if there are areal tendencies.

I can't link to the search directly, but here's a link to the COCA home page to look it up for yourself: https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/.

British National Corpus

Like the CCAE, the BNC has entries from ``a wide range of genres (e.g. spoken, fiction, magazines, newspapers, and academic).'' It has 15 hits for MINUS * DEGREES and none at all for NEGATIVE * DEGREES indicating "negative" is at least an Americanism.

Conclusion

"Minus" is indeed what most North Americans and all Brits say. That said, "negative" is not wrong, and unlike a word like "inflammable," you're unlikely to be misunderstood if you use. I don't see any reason to recommend against "negative," although if you're unsure, you could prefer "minus."

Maybe someone can weigh in whether it's correct in a technical context to say "negative" over "minus."

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  • I think this is too subjective. I assume COCA analyses written English, whereas, the question is about spoken English. A better analysis would be radio weather reports (I assume TV just shows the figures). Subjectively as someone living in Britain, I have never in all my life heard "negative 10" in the context of the weather. I have only encountered it in an IT course I did in a mathematical context. (Nor did I encounter it when I lived in Chicago for three years.)
    – David
    Commented Feb 24, 2017 at 22:25
  • @David COCA includes transcripts of speech. For example, some of the first examples of "negative 50 degrees" are a transcript of an NPR interview.
    – Azor Ahai -him-
    Commented Feb 24, 2017 at 22:26
  • @David Interestingly, the British National Corpus doesn't have any hits for "negative * degrees." I'll add that to my answer tonight.
    – Azor Ahai -him-
    Commented Feb 24, 2017 at 22:29
  • OK. But the sample size seems small. I do wonder about these things. Ngram, for example is useful, but it only does books, so its coverage is often less relevant for the scientific literature.
    – David
    Commented Feb 24, 2017 at 22:30
  • @David Unfortunately, using Google Ngram would mean leaving out speech entirely.
    – Azor Ahai -him-
    Commented Feb 24, 2017 at 22:35
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Thinking about a number line or scale, any number below zero can be referred to as "negative" OR "minus". So mathematically and conceptually either works.

But conventionally, in reference to temperatures, "negative" doesn't get used. I also speak Swedish, and in that language it's the same - "minus" is always used for weather and temperature, never "negative".

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  • Swedish isn't really relevant—both because it's not English, but also because ‘negative’ is never used with any kind of number in Swedish, it's ‘minus’ in all contexts (not counting describing a number as being ‘a negative number’).
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Feb 23, 2017 at 8:32
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"Negative 10 degrees" is just as easy to understand as "minus 10 degrees". Temperature is odd though, particularly since there are different systems to relay the same information (Celsius & Fahrenheit). Regardless, when speaking about the weather, you're referring to a number relative to a fixed value (0 degrees).

As such, I'm inclined to say both are equally correct. "Negative" tells the listener the value is positional (in relation to a fixed point on a spectrum) in nature, as does "minus".

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  • Although I agree with you, using the word negative brings to my mind the uncomfotable notion of a negative absolute temperature, which is impossible.
    – Bobbi Bennett
    Commented Jan 20, 2016 at 2:10
  • @BobbiBennett Yeah, I actually thought about that for a moment, but the same could be said if "minus" were used. Up to the speaker to use it correctly given the context.
    – Jared Andrews
    Commented Jan 20, 2016 at 2:21
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I often hear "negative" being used to described temperature from American English speakers, whereas "minus" is normally used by English speakers from the UK.

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  • Well, the view from Chicago is actually "minus ten wind chill." That's -23 centigrade. Good thing I don't live further north.
    – Stu W
    Commented Jan 20, 2016 at 4:36
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I'm a math student. I say that "negative 10 degrees" is more correct because negative is the sign of the number and thus properly a modifier in English, but minus is an arithmetic operator, which strictly speaking takes two operands: "zero minus 10". Of course, even in upper-level math class we'll pronounce the integer -10 as "minus ten" but I consider this informal/slang, and we would not say this in a class on number systems, axioms of arithmetic, etc. where the distinction is important.

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  • There's nothing colloquial or slangy about using ‘minus’ for temperatures. Maths doesn't really have anything to do with that—it's just idiomacy. To my ear, using ‘negative’ about degrees sounds a lot more colloquial and slangy than ‘minus’.
    – Janus Bahs Jacquet
    Commented Feb 23, 2017 at 8:37

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