Regular expression problem(s) in Bash: [^negate] doesn’t seem to work

When I execute ls /directory | grep '[^term]' in Bash I get a regular listing, as if the grep command is ignored somehow. I tried the same thing with egrep, I tried to use it with double and single quotes, but to no better results. When I try ls /directory | grep '^[term] I get all entries beginning with term – as expected.