# Positive term for “unnegated”?

I read a paper which talks about "a logic formula in which each variable appears at most twice unnegated and once negated". The term "unnegated" is double-negative, which makes it slightly unclear. Is there a more positive term to denote a variable that is not negated?

I looked in an English thesaurus, but all suggestions seem out-of-context in logic.

• "... appears at most twice positively (as a positive literal) and once negatively (as a negative literal)." The parenthetical explanations are optional. – Yuval Filmus Jan 29 '14 at 18:53
• @YuvalFilmus Thanks! I used your suggestion in the following Wikipedia page: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/… – Erel Segal-Halevi Jan 29 '14 at 19:32
• I wouldn't consider the term "unnegated" to be a double negative, since the "un-" prefix applies to the variable itself while the "-negated" stem applies to the truth or falsity represented by that variable. Other possibilities would be "true form" and either "complemented form" or "negated form". – supercat Jan 30 '14 at 17:36

You often see negative variables ($\neg x$) and positive variables ($x$). A literal is either a positive or a negative variable.