Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun In pathology, a disease.
  • noun Inflammation of the sclera in the aged.
  • noun A chronic destructive disease of one of the larger joints, usually the hip, which occurs in advanced life.
  • noun In law, an evil.

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

  • noun An evil. See mala.

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

  • noun an evil or wrongdoing.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Latin malum

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Examples

  • When Jerome translated the Hebrew description of Eden's "good and evil" fruit, he chose the Latin word malum, which, according to biblical archaeologist Schneir Levin, was intended to mean something similar to "malicious."

    Excerpt: Banana by Dan Koeppel 2008

  • The Latin word malum means both apple and evil, which may be the origin of the apple symbol.

    A Handbook of Symbols in Christian Art Gertrude Grace Sill 1975

  • The Latin word malum means both apple and evil, which may be the origin of the apple symbol.

    A Handbook of Symbols in Christian Art Gertrude Grace Sill 1975

  • Puschmann says: "The accounts given of intermittent fever, pneumonia, phthisis, psoriasis, lupus, which they called the malum mortuum, of ulcers on the sexual organs, among which it is easy to recognize chancre, and of the disturbances of the mental faculties, especially deserve mention."

    Old-Time Makers of Medicine The Story of The Students And Teachers of the Sciences Related to Medicine During the Middle Ages James Joseph Walsh 1903

  • By what ancient intuition does the Latin word "malum" mean both

    The Forgotten Threshold 1915

  • The phrase from traditional moral theology so translated is intrinsece malum, which is often used in magisterial documents.

    The concept of the "intrinsically evil" Mike L 2007

  • The phrase from traditional moral theology so translated is intrinsece malum, which is often used in magisterial documents.

    Archive 2007-12-01 Mike L 2007

  • These are the acts which, in the Church's moral tradition, have been termed "intrinsically evil" (intrinsece malum): they are such always and per se, in other words, on account of their very object, and quite apart from the ulterior intentions of the one acting and the circumstances.

    Social doctrine 2009

  • That points out, I think, a problem with malum prohibitum firearms laws.

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Mayor Bloomberg’s gun show bill 2010

  • While the Latin malum covered both phenomena equally, its common English translation, “evil,” elsewhere is generally used to refer to the things that humans undertake to do against one another; the natural catastrophes that afflict us should probably be called by some other name, something like “adversity” or “misfortune.”

    In the Valley of the Shadow James L. Kugel 2011

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