General rightsThis document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/pure/about/ebr-terms Intuitively, materials become both shorter and wider when compressed along their length.Here we show how a composite material or structure can display a simultaneous reversal in the direction of deformation for both the axial and transverse dimensions, corresponding to negative values of effective stiffness and effective Poisson's ratio, respectively. A negative Poisson's ratio [1] (NPR or auxetic [2] ) host assembly stabilising (otherwise unstable) embedded negative stiffness [3] [4,5] Metamaterials include negative refractive index [6] and negative effective mass density [7] materials finding use in, for example, electromagnetic and acoustic cloaking/lensing applications, respectively. Examples of mechanical metamaterials are negative compressibility transition, [4] NPR [1] and NS [3] materials.Auxetic materials and structures exist, and are stable in the unconstrained state, at the nanoscale (e.g. crystalline forms of silica, [8] zeolites [9] and cellulose [10] ), microscale (microporous polymers [11] and microfabricated truss-like structures [12] ) and macroscale (composite laminates, [13] foams, [14,15] honeycombs [16] and patterned elastomeric spherical shells [17] ). Enhanced shear modulus, [18] energy absorption [19] and indentation resistance [20] are some of the benefits known for auxetic materials and structures. [21] Periodic arrangements of sub-units leading to auxetic behaviour include truss, [16,22] corner-sharing polygon, [23,24] and hybrid truss-polygon [25] frameworks, and particle assemblies. [26,27] NS materials and structures, on the other hand, are thermodynamically unstable unless stabilised by an external constraint.[28] Examples of NS materials include polymethacrylimide (PMI) foams, [16] honeycombs and lattices, [29,AA1,AA2] and certain crystals (VO 2 , BaTiO 3 )undergoing constrained phase transformation. [30,31] The NS effect can also be displayed by constrained buckled tube [32] , buckled beam [33] or multiple magnet [34] systems. Whereas our system is demonstrated to display NS under quasi-static loading, it should be pointed out that a number of these previous studies [3,[30][31][32] measured the dynamic modulus. Dynamic loading of NS materials can give rise to beneficial temporary effects demonstrated, for example, in 3 3 composite systems containing NS inclusions or elements which display extreme stiffness [30] and vibration damping [3,32] responses.Our 'double-negative' mechanical metamaterial displaying simultaneous negative Poisson's ratio and negative stiffness properties comprises an auxetic host framework constraining embedded NS elements. The framework consists of a regular array of interlocked rigid hexagonal sub-units with 3 male and 3 female keys per sub-unit, arranged in an alternating fashion around the six sides of the hexagon [27] (Figure 1...