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 ormalignant ;badness ,evilness ,monstrosity ,depravity ,maliciousness . - noun A non-benign
cancer ; amalignancy .
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
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Examples
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He has touches even of what he calls the malignity, the malign irony of Montaigne.
Miscellaneous Studies; a series of essays Walter Pater 1866
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[Footnote: The word malignity was obviously used in the sense of the French malin.]
Margot Asquith, an Autobiography - Two Volumes in One Margot Asquith 1904
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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 Scottish Chiefs 1875
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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.
Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M--y W--y M--e Montague, Lady Mary W 1724
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“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.
Lady Mary Wortley Montague Melville, Lewis 1925
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"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 Scottish Chiefs Jane Porter 1813
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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.
Plutarch's Morals 46-120? Plutarch
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He was now ashamed to recall the malignity with which, a little while before, he had regarded this innocent unfortunate.
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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 Alexander Maclaren 1868
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There was nothing of what medical men call malignity in the case of
A Mortal Antipathy: first opening of the new portfolio Oliver Wendell Holmes 1851
bilby commented on the word malignity
Malformed s-word.
August 30, 2008