Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The doing of harm; mischief.
  • noun Harmful or malicious nature or quality.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The character of being maleficent; the doing or producing of evil.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun Evil doing, esp. to others.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun harmfulness or mischief

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun doing or causing evil
  • noun the quality or nature of being harmful or evil

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Latin maleficentia, from maleficus, malefic; see malefic.]

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