Definitions

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

  • noun Misconduct in public office.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Evil conduct; fraudulent or tricky dealing; especially, misbehavior in an office or employment, as by fraud, breach of trust, extortion, etc.

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

  • noun Evil conduct; fraudulent practices; misbehavior, corruption, or extortion in office.

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

  • noun corrupt behaviour, illegitimate activity, especially by someone in authority

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

  • noun misconduct in public office

Etymologies

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

[French, from malverser, to misbehave, from Old French, from Latin male versārī : male, badly; see mel- in Indo-European roots + versārī, to behave; see wer- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From French malversation, from malverser, from Latin male versari ("behave badly").

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Examples

  • Secondly by the flight and voluntary desertion of the younger Fairford, the advocate; on account of which, he served both father and son with a petition and complaint against them, for malversation in office.

    Redgauntlet 2008

  • On the heels of the revelation that Santorum has a mortgage at market rate and that he does not himself pay for work-related expenses comes the news that he established a charity that pays out money to the needy, which is clearly a malversation.

    Michael Smerconish: Rick Santorum - Exposed! 2008

  • What's more, I believe the voice of millions of netizens will bring justice, fairness, democracy and social progress, and face the corruption and malversation down.

    True or false? A Chinese Fugitive Sergeant���s Diary 2008

  • Cases at Saint Helena, alluding to a confidential servant whom he had been obliged to dismiss for malversation.

    Eve and David 2007

  • There are magnificent avenues of elm-trees, great gardens encircled by the moat, and a circumference of walls about a huge manorial pile which represents the profits of the maltote, the gains of farmers-general, legalized malversation, or the vast fortunes of great houses now brought low beneath the hammer of the Civil Code.

    A Woman of Thirty 2007

  • Cases at Saint Helena, alluding to a confidential servant whom he had been obliged to dismiss for malversation.

    Eve and David 2007

  • Adam Smith warned that monopoly leads to negligence and malversation and undermines liberty and justice.

    Richard Corbett Watch Praguetory 2007

  • For in the prevalence of sense and spirit over stupidity and malversation, all reasonable men have an interest; and as intellectual beings we feel the air purified by the electric shock, when material force is overthrown by intellectual energies.

    Representative Men 2006

  • Director, certainly; for he hinted at malversation of shares: but the Company still stood as united as the Hand-inHand, and as firm as the Rock.

    The Great Hoggarty Diamond 2006

  • She had been born, but it was only gossip said so, in Tasmania: her grandfather had been exported for some hanky-panky mid-Victorian scandal; malversation of trusts was it?

    Between the Acts 2004

Comments

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  • He accumulated wealth by the basest arts of fraud and corruption; but his malversations were so notorious, that George was compelled to escape from the pursuits of justice.

    - Gibbon, Decline and Fall..., XXIII. v

    June 9, 2009

  • The stories appall the whole nation.

    The villains outrage in rotation.

    True, winners take spoils,

    But conscience recoils

    At boldness of such malversation.

    October 4, 2017

  • "Mr. Jolter was desired to write in the masters name to the commodore, requesting him to remove Tom Pipes from the person of his nephew, the said Pipes being a principal actor and abettor in all his malversations..."

    — Smollett, Peregrine Pickle

    January 17, 2022