Privative adjective

Other examples in English include "pretend", "fictitious", and "artificial".

The defining feature of privative adjectives is shown below in set theoretic notation.

[1][2] Privative adjectives are non-subsective, but behave differently from ordinary non-subsectives in important respects, at least in English.

While ordinary non-subsectives such as the modal adjective "alleged" can only be used in attributive position, privative adjectives can be used either in attributive or predicative position.

[1] In part because of this pattern, Partee (1997) argued that privative adjectives are in fact intersective adjectives which coerce a broader interpretation of the nouns they modify.