According to the Office for National Statistics, “positivity rates” were still on the rise in some places in England before the second lockdown ended. What did people have to be so cheerful about? Not much: the ONS meant that more people were testing positive for Covid-19. This, we may assume, is not what Prince meant when he sang: “Positivity / Have you had your plus sign today?”
You might think this a tin-eared choice of phrase, since “positivity” is also one of those mandatory modern virtues: the kind of smiling assent you must display consistently while giant corporations destroy your life and the planet. But its first use in English was more neutral, as 17th-century theologians discussed the “positivity of sin”, meaning that sin was not simply the absence of virtue but a thing in its own right.
Since then “positivity” has been applied in senses logical, electrical and mathematical, but perhaps the most salient use in the current context – especially for hapless members of government – is the warning by cleric Isaac Watts in his 1741 treatise The Improvement of the Mind. “Courage and positivity are never more necessary,” he writes, than when one is surrounded by fools.
• Steven Poole’s A Word for Every Day of the Year is published by Quercus.
