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In a report, I have a set of experiences a person has reported experiencing, and a set of experiences a person has reported not experiencing.

I want to give these a pithy descriptor since I've got a lot of these people.

"Reported:" is easy, but I can't find a good opposite of it (can't use unreported, since they have reported something).

Candidates so far are: Contra-reported, Reported-not, Not experienced

I prefer Contra-reported but it isn't a used phrase if google is to be believed.

Example:

Reported: Too much energy, Waking up early

[Word]: Obsession with costumes

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  • It’s still reported, but in the negative: reported no obsession ....
    – Lawrence
    Commented Oct 3, 2018 at 16:01
  • Your example sentence using reported makes no sense whatsoever. Reporting something has nothing to do with having too much energy or waking up early. Unless that's the content of the report. But that doesn't help explain what reported (or its opposite) means.
    – Jason Bassford
    Commented Oct 3, 2018 at 22:32
  • In this case, the person may have reported having too much energy and waking up early. Hard to say if they did actually have too much energy
    – gbartonowen
    Commented Oct 4, 2018 at 12:35
  • @JasonBassford I think you did not understand the use-case of gbartonowen's example. He will use reported when an interviewee (obviously a person participating in some psychologocial or medical testing) positively reported having some feeling (or sensation or whatever). He needs a word for "reported that he has not had this feeling" or "reported the non-experiencing of that feeling" or "reported positively that this feeling did not occur". He cannot use "did not report xyz" because this means something different, namely "feeling may have been there, but he did not report it".
    – Christian Geiselmann
    Commented Oct 8, 2018 at 14:37
  • @ChristianGeiselmann You're correct, thanks for the clarification
    – gbartonowen
    Commented Oct 8, 2018 at 14:48

1 Answer 1

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It seems the task is to find very brief expressions because you have to use this repeatedly in a research paper or so. So, brevity prevents you to use complicated expressions such as "Reported to not have been experienced".

Under this presumption an obvious thing to do would be:

Reported: too much energy; waking up early.

Denied: obsession with costumes

If you want more similarity of your terms and if in what you are doing you have the liberty to create terms, you could use

Reported: too much energy; waking up early.

Disreported: obsession with costumes

I initially thought that de-reported would be better because less flashy, but then, de-reported could rather mean "first reported, then de-reported" which is not what you want to express (like in briefing vs de-briefing).

Additional thoughts:

Actually, if you go after the roots of the word in Latin where reportare is "bring back" from re (back) and portare (to bring), it would be a logical thing to work with the prefix:

Reported: too much energy; waking up early

Disported: obsession with costumes

(Again deported would be closer to my mind, but then you run into conflicts with the ordinary meaning of deported. You could, of course, spell it de-ported, or simply explain your choice of words in the introduction to your study.)

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  • I would appreciate downvoters to leave a comment why they think this answer is not useful. Thank you.
    – Christian Geiselmann
    Commented Oct 8, 2018 at 14:40
  • I didn't down-vote. I'd be inclined to up-vote if you drop "disreported" and explain why "denied" is a good choice (e.g. because a denial implies the reporting of said denial).
    – Lawrence
    Commented Oct 17, 2018 at 9:01

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