Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Showing great malevolence; disposed to do evil.
- adj. Highly injurious; pernicious.
- adj. Pathology Threatening to life; virulent: a malignant disease.
- adj. Pathology Tending to metastasize; cancerous. Used of a tumor.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Disposed to inflict suffering or cause distress; having extreme malevolence or enmity; virulently hostile; malicious: as, a malignant heart.
- Virulently harmful or mischievous; threatening great danger; pernicious in influence or effect.
- Specifically.
- In astrology, threatening to fortune or life; fateful: as, the malignant aspect of the stars.
- In pathology, virulent; tending; to produce death; threatening a fatal issue: as, a malignant ulcer; a malignant fever; malignant pustule or scarlet fever.
- Extremely heinous: as, the malignant nature of sin.
- Synonyms Malevolent, bitter, rancorous, spiteful, malign. See animosity.
- n. A person of extreme enmity or evil intentions; an ill-affected person.
- n. Specifically, in English history, one of the adherents of Charles I. and his son Charles II. during the civil war; a Royalist; a Cavalier: so called by the Roundheads, the opposite party.
Wiktionary
- adj. Harmful, malevolent, injurious.
- adj. oncology Harmfully cancerous; as a malignant tumor.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Disposed to do harm, inflict suffering, or cause distress; actuated by extreme malevolence or enmity; virulently inimical; bent on evil; malicious.
- adj. Characterized or caused by evil intentions; pernicious.
- adj. (Med.) Tending to produce death; threatening a fatal issue; virulent.
- n. A man of extreme enmity or evil intentions.
- n. (Eng. Hist.) One of the adherents of Charles I. or Charles II.; -- so called by the opposite party.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. dangerous to health; characterized by progressive and uncontrolled growth (especially of a tumor)
Examples
“_malignant_ and _poisonous_ affections, as scirrhus and other varieties of cancer, and also cases of infectious virus, demand continually, or with but occasional exceptions, the primary galvanic current A B. ☞ In treating these malignant affections, the current should be run through as short a distance of _healthy_ tissue as possible, yet so as fairly to reach the diseased part.”
“ The term malignant is used in describing cancerous tumors (see cancer) because such growths are a threat to the health of the individual.”
“Congressman Foley is the poster child for what we call malignant narcissism.”
“Sure, there was that initial rush of anxiety at hearing the word "malignant" for the first time, but it was already disappearing by the time I got off the phone with the surgeon.”
“APL is characterized by the malignant proliferation of these immature promyelocytes.”
“This trial was the first to report a survival advantage from chemotherapy in malignant pleural mesothelioma showing a statistically significant improvement in median survival from 10 months in the patients treated with cisplatin alone to 13.3 months in the combination pemetrexed group in patients who received supplementation with folate and vitamin B12.”
“We wish the name malignant were obsolete and antiquate, if so be the thing itself, which is such a root of bitterness, were extirpated out of the church.”
“However, they do nothing to block long-wave ultraviolet radiation which is the major cause of a skin cancer, known as malignant melanoma.”
“Apart from increased risks of sunburn, AHAs also increase risks of a dangerous skin cancer, known as malignant melanoma.”
Samuel S. Epstein: Anti-Aging and Anti-Wrinkling Skin Care Products: Cosmeceuticals
“SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Senator Ted Kennedy learned his diagnosis in May 2008, a brain tumor called a malignant glioma.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘malignant’.
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GRE Barrons Wordlist
A complete Barron's Wordlist for GRE preparation. Your online flashcard replacement.
abase, abash, abate, abbreviate, abdicate, aberrant, aberration, abet, abeyance, abhor, abject, abjure and 4087 more...
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Test Prep or Just for fun
Building a list for standardized test prep or just for learning some new words! Please add any words that you feel are important for the SAT/GRE/GMAT etc...
throng, morass, parley, facile, kismet, strife, jetsam, carrion, annex, harbinger, vestige, surreptitious and 575 more...
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1100
abound, technology, branch of knowled..., prognosticate, automaton, matron, an older married ..., realm, special field of ..., kingdom, annals, historical records and 981 more...
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7thGradeWords
horde, doggedly, retina, frail, jovial, insidious, injudicious, brazen, tentative, hortle, adaver, benign and 91 more...
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GRE 2014
abase, abate, abdicate, aberrant, abeyance, abhor, abjure, abortive, abound, abrasive, abreast, abridge and 1577 more...
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ghost
This is Ghost List 2 ( the kind that go 'boo!' ) :P
( open list )
more:
http://www.wordnik.com/lists/macabrephantom, spectral, specter, spectre, spooky, poltergeist, haunt, spirit, banshee, cryptic, shadow, phantasm and 311 more...
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Words build meanings from origins( et...
These come from gamma meditation ,I think.
discursive, exogenous, machinations, purportedly, sumptuous, congruity, cantankerous, incongruous, festoon, hessian, ratiocinative, stratigraphic and 2057 more...
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Quacksalvers et al. Nostrum
Bring forth the cathartic illumination on malignant,maniacal,medical,menage a trios and more egotists stymie
culpability, piousfraud, capacitous, rhabdomyolysis, scapula, idiosyncrasy, quiescent, malignant, nefarious, sociological, sociopath, pathogen and 204 more...
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People are Scum
words that one may enjoy using to describe other people or their actions
degenerate, reprobate, scapegrace, capricious, sycophant, arbitrary, infernal, abominable, iniquitous, nefarious, philistine, sadistic and 39 more...
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2
kerniving, scandinavia, confectionary, mangrove, bejewelled, flesh, crystalline, gazelle, pantaloons, bluebird, caribou, albatross and 88 more...
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I am : evil
Adjectives that are very, very bad.
evil, wicked, diabolical, nasty, demonic, corrupt, depraved, nefarious, sinister, villainous, vile, reprobate and 18 more...
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And i thought my words were "bad"!
malevolent, machiavellian, duplicitous, deceitful, rancorous, spiteful, malignant, cunning, vindictive, tyrannical, imperious, despotic and 10 more...
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bianca's euphonic list
paprika, poignant, poignancy, viscous, subtlety, robust, vehicular, combustion, viscosity, velocity, rotunda, malignant and 18 more...
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Words from Moby Dick
frigate, presumptuous, genteel, succor, hearthstone, gentry, factitious, bilious, insurgent, portent, enervate, genuflect and 303 more...
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1100 words you need to know
GRE words
voracious, indiscriminate, eminent, steeped, replete, abound, technology, prognosticate, automaton, matron, paradox, realm and 288 more...
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the first list
an immense, grandiloquent list that loads like a thousand years sentence in stone. new words are in the other lists.
ridiculous, brummagem, predicament, sanctimonious, vapid, eschew, admonish, auspicious, capitulation, enumerate, lachrymose, tenet and 1648 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for malignant.
reesetee Good question! Sadly, almost no one uses malign these days. Such a great word.... Sep 21, 2007
npydyuan Why is the opposite of malignant "benign" and not "benignant"? Sep 21, 2007