malicious

[ muh-lish-uhs ]

adjective

1. full of, characterized by, or showing malice; intentionally harmful; spiteful:

   malicious gossip.

2. Law. vicious, wanton, or mischievous in motivation or purpose.

malicious

/ məˈlɪʃəs /

adjective

1. characterized by malice
2. motivated by wrongful, vicious, or mischievous purposes

Derived Forms

• maˈliciousness, noun
• maˈliciously, adverb

Other Words From

• ma·li·cious·ly adverb
• ma·li·cious·ness noun
• non·ma·li·cious adjective
• non·ma·li·cious·ly adverb
• sem·i·ma·li·cious adjective
• sem·i·ma·li·cious·ly adverb
• un·ma·li·cious adjective
• un·ma·li·cious·ly adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of malicious¹

First recorded in 1175–1225; Middle English malicius, from Old French, from Latin malitiōsus; malice, -ous

Example Sentences

For the record, disinformation purposely misleads people, while misinformation is simply inaccurate, but without malicious intent.

From Singularity Hub 

With that, the researchers were able to achieve a cross-site scripting exploit that injected a malicious payload directly into the internals of the browser built into Jabber.

From Ars Technica

A security vulnerability in Android could have allowed malicious apps to siphon off sensitive data from other apps on the same device.

From TechCrunch

Also, Bing does “not want to index ” spammy content or pages that have malicious activities on them, he said.

From Search Engine Land

In the fall of 2013, the party arrested hundreds of microbloggers for what it described as “malicious rumor-mongering” and paraded a particularly influential one on national television to make an example of him.

From MIT Technology Review

"Malicious destruction of property" could probably be proved without Tiger's testimony.

From The Daily Beast

Malicious persons in the town even declared that the lamented Torvestad had got his wife in a lottery at Christiansfeldt.

From Project Gutenberg

Malicious tongues went so far as to assert that he secretly and stealthily sold his handiwork.

From Project Gutenberg

Malicious fate had assigned to the most diffident individual in the company the trying responsibility of leading the way.

From Project Gutenberg

Malicious reports were also spread against them, which must have been almost harder to bear.

From Project Gutenberg

Malicious Fate, too, they felt, would even crown with the grand prix the number they would have chosen.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• malevolent
• malignant
• mischievous
• nasty
• pernicious
• petty
• spiteful
• vengeful
• venomous
• vicious
• virulent
• wicked