Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. Intense ill will or hatred; great malice.
- n. An act or a feeling of great malice.
- n. The condition or quality of being highly dangerous or injurious; deadliness.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The character or state of being malign; extreme enmity or evil disposition toward another, proceeding from baseness of heart; malice or malevolence; deep-rooted spite.
- n. The quality of being malign or malignant; extreme evilness; heinousness; specifically, in pathology, virulence; malignancy.
- n. Synonyms Ill-will, Enmity (see animosity), maliciousness.
- n. Destructiveness, deadliness.
Wiktionary
- n. The quality of being malign or malignant; badness, evilness, monstrosity, depravity, maliciousness.
- n. A non-benign cancer; a malignancy.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. The state or quality of being malignant; disposition to do evil; virulent enmity; malignancy; malice; spite.
- n. Virulence; deadly quality.
- n. rare Extreme evilness of nature or influence; perniciousness; heinousness.
WordNet 3.0
- n. quality of being disposed to evil; intense ill will
- n. wishing evil to others
Etymologies
- From the Latin roots mal- ("bad") and -nitor ("strive"). Translated from the Ancient Greek word κακοήθεια (kakoētheia, "bad character, mischievous"). (Wiktionary)
Examples
“He has touches even of what he calls the malignity, the malign irony of Montaigne.”
“[Footnote: The word malignity was obviously used in the sense of the French malin.]”
“Perhaps, madam, had not the preservation of my father's blood occasioned such malignity from the English, that nothing but an armed force can deliver his preserver, I, too, might be content to see Scotland in slavery.”
“THE word malignity, and a passage in your letter, call to my mind the wicked wasp of Twickenham; his lies affect me now no more; they will be all as much despised as the story of the seraglio and the handkerchief, of which I am persuaded he was the only inventor.”
““The word malignity, and a passage in your letter, call to my mind the wicked wasp of Twickenham: his lies affect me now no more; they will be all as much despised as the story of the seraglio and the handkerchief, of which I am persuaded he was the only inventor.”
“Perhaps, madam, had not the preservation of my father's blood occasioned such malignity from the English, that nothing but an armed force can deliver his preserver, I, too, might be content to see Scotland in slavery.”
“So the curious man, eager to hear a history of what is bad, is possessed by the passion of malignity, which is brother to envy and jealousy.”
“He was now ashamed to recall the malignity with which, a little while before, he had regarded this innocent unfortunate.”
“What makes heaven fill with rapture, and flash through all her golden glories with light, what makes hell look on with the lurid scowl of baffled malignity, that is what _you_ are careless about.”
Expositions of Holy Scripture : St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII
“There was nothing of what medical men call malignity in the case of”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘malignity’.
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Interesting Words
A list of words that I find cool.
décolleté, ineluctably, pantechnicon, ossary, peripeteia, harridan, recidivist, irremediable, suppuration, slaver, loam, umbrage and 15 more...
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Words I like
A list contrived for the sole purpose of storing words I like to include in my writing; words that inspire or carry power for me.
contrite, meadow, sward, ossary, calumny, moribund, necropolis, chthonic, murmur, erstwhile, chime, beryl and 63 more...
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Clarissa, Or, The History of a Young ...
These words are from Samuel Richardson's novel Clarissa, Or, The History of a Young Lady, 1747-48
adumbrate, virago, varlet, rencounter, akimbo, palliate, amanuensis, amok, equipage, cully, se'ennight, resentments and 560 more...
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Wuthering Heights
From Wuthering Heights
sagacity, austere, surmise, corroborating, malignity, ensconing, copious, perforce, obviate, dilapidation, must needs, palaver and 154 more...
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Anger Mismanagement
churlish, vendetta, retaliatory, bellicose, excoriate, enfant terrible, imperious, vitriolic, upbraid, umbrageous, lambaste, inveigh and 67 more...
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blueeyes25's Words
Tweets
Looking for tweets for malignity.
bilby Malformed s-word. Aug 30, 2008