denial
Pluraldenials (some meanings)
- 1A refusal to believe that a real problem exists or is taking place.
For months he remained in denial about his failing health.
The company's denial of the safety risks delayed any real action.
Oppositeacceptance, acknowledgment, recognition
Note
Everyday speech took this over from the psychologist's defense mechanism, and it now stretches well beyond one person's mind. Joris Luyendijk, writing in The Guardian Weekly in 2013, describes the British establishment's "denial over what finance had become" before 2008 and likens it to an alcoholic's. The problem being denied usually follows about or over: denial about his drinking, denial over the banks.
- 2A statement asserting that something is not true.
The company released a firm denial of the allegations within hours.
Despite his repeated denials, the evidence kept piling up.
Similarrefutation, rebuttal, contradiction, repudiation, disavowal
Oppositeadmission, confession, confirmation, acknowledgment
- 3The act of refusing, or failing, to give or allow something that someone has asked for or wants.
The denial of medical care to inmates sparked a lawsuit.
Repeated denials of her visa application forced the family apart.
Similarrefusal, rejection, withholding
Oppositeapproval, acceptance, granting
- 4A psychological defense mechanism in which a person refuses to accept the truth of a painful fact or prospect.
Therapists often see denial in patients confronting a terminal diagnosis.
Grief can begin with denial, the mind shielding itself from a loss it cannot yet face.
Oppositeacceptance
Note
Here the word is a clinical term that escaped the clinic. "No facts, just emotion," a 2007 Washington Times piece, traces it to the therapyspeak of the mid-20th century. There it was applied to facing mortality and popularized as the first stage of grief. Its signature construction is be in denial, followed by about or a that-clause: he is in denial that he has a drinking problem.
- 5The act of refusing to acknowledge that one is to blame for having done something wrong.
The executive's denial of any role in the fraud collapsed under scrutiny.
Years of denial ended when he finally apologized to those he had harmed.
Similardisavowal, repudiation, disclaimer
Oppositeadmission, confession, acknowledgment
- 6A disowning or disavowal of someone or something.
His denial of his former mentor surprised everyone who knew them.
The apostle's threefold denial became one of the story's central moments.
Similarrepudiation, disavowal, renunciation, rejection
Oppositeacknowledgment, embrace
- 7The rejection or distortion of well-established historical facts or their accepted interpretation.
Genocide denial often relies on cherry-picked sources and forged documents.
His book traces the spread of denial about events that are exhaustively documented.
Note
Historians usually put the denied event in front of the word: Holocaust denial, Armenian genocide denial. The more formal names are negationism and denialism. Marc Mamigonian, writing in 2015, argues that such denial does more than negate the past. In his view it also tries to build a new reality in its place, which separates it from simple error.
- 8In logic, the negation of a proposition.
The denial of a true proposition is itself false.
A proof by contradiction assumes the denial of what it sets out to establish.
Similarnegation
Oppositeaffirmation
Note
Logicians use denial and negation for the same operation. The denial of a statement is true exactly when the statement is false, and it is usually written ¬p. Unlike a statement that something is untrue, it needs no speaker: denying "there might be X" simply yields "there is no X," whatever anyone believes. In classical logic, denying a denial returns the original statement.
Practice
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Origin
Formed from the verb 'deny' combined with the suffix '-al'.