Definitions

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

  • noun Intense ill will or hatred; great malice.
  • noun An act or a feeling of great malice.
  • noun The condition or quality of being highly dangerous or injurious; deadliness.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun 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.
  • noun The quality of being malign or malignant; extreme evilness; heinousness; specifically, in pathology, virulence; malignancy.
  • noun Synonyms Ill-will, Enmity (see animosity), maliciousness.
  • noun Destructiveness, deadliness.

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

  • noun The state or quality of being malignant; disposition to do evil; virulent enmity; malignancy; malice; spite.
  • noun Virulence; deadly quality.
  • noun rare Extreme evilness of nature or influence; perniciousness; heinousness.

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

  • noun The quality of being malign or malignant; badness, evilness, monstrosity, depravity, maliciousness.
  • noun A non-benign cancer; a malignancy.

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

  • noun quality of being disposed to evil; intense ill will
  • noun wishing evil to others

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From the Latin roots mal- ("bad") and -nitor ("strive"). Translated from the Ancient Greek word κακοήθεια (kakoētheia, "bad character, mischievous").

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Examples

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  • Malformed s-word.

    August 30, 2008