Negative Capability
The capacity to remain in uncertainty, mystery, and doubt without grasping for definitive answers — an intellectual openness that John Keats considered essential to creative greatness.
Origin
John Keats coined the phrase in a letter to his brothers George and Thomas on 22 December 1817, defining it as the quality "which Shakespeare possessed so enormously — that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." Keats was contrasting Shakespeare's imaginative openness with what he saw as Samuel Taylor Coleridge's compulsive need for philosophical certainty — a critique sharpened by William Hazlitt's lectures on English poetry.
Everyday Use
Sitting with an unsolved problem instead of forcing a quick answer. Holding two contradictory ideas in your head at once without rushing to pick a side. Negative capability is the skill of staying comfortable in the gray zone — and it turns out that's often where the best insights come from.