malady
Americannoun
-
maladies
plural
-
any disorder or disease of the body, especially one that is chronic or deepseated.
- Synonyms:
- indisposition, ailment, complaint, affliction, sickness, illness
-
any undesirable or disordered condition.
social maladies; a malady of the spirit.
noun
-
any disease or illness
-
any unhealthy, morbid, or desperate condition
a malady of the spirit
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of malady
1200–50; Middle English maladie < Old French, equivalent to malade sick (< Late Latin male habitus literally, ill-conditioned; see mal-, habit 1) + -ie -y 3
Explanation
A malady is an illness, like a malady that keeps you home, sick in bed for days, or something that causes you to have trouble or to suffer, like jet lag — a malady that affects travelers. Malady, pronounced "MAL-uh-dee," comes from the Latin words male, meaning "bad or ill" and habitus for "have, hold." When you have a malady, it is like something bad is holding you, such as an illness — the common cold: a malady of winter. Some bad habits cause maladies, such as never having any money — the malady of people who spend freely, not thinking of the future.
Vocabulary lists containing malady
Take the Bad with the Good: Bene and Mal
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The Tragedy of Macbeth
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The Kite Runner
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
“Maddie’s Secret” isn’t much of a secret, not if you remember those made-for-TV malady movies that turned subjects like bulimia into hypnotic melodramas.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 26, 2026
Some believed that the latest epidemic was of a "mystical malady", a common belief in some remote areas of the DRC.
From Barron's ● May 24, 2026
Anxiety paralysis is real, and people who procrastinate often are not lazy, but instead suffer from this all-too-common malady.
From MarketWatch ● May 18, 2026
By treating actual adults—the chat participants weren’t teenagers—with kid gloves, they contribute to the cultural malady of infantilization.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 16, 2025
No form of exile or malady can defeat us.
From "The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora" by Pablo Cartaya
One condition alone can be difficult to address, but intertwined maladies further complicate matters.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 6, 2026
The author whose name is forever associated with the title of his 1973 book, “The Anxiety of Influence,” suffered from depression and was susceptible to other maladies.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 29, 2026
"They treat a whole host of maladies," said Thomas Patton, a professor at New York state's Union College who has studied Myanmar's mystics.
From Barron's ● Dec. 21, 2025
Research shows that such stress can cause an increase in physical, psychological and emotional illness, along with other maladies, up to and including death.
From Salon ● Nov. 1, 2025
When she sticks out her tongue and allows me to treat her small maladies, I can see that every one of her organs has been compromised in some way.
From "The Poisonwood Bible" by Barbara Kingsolver
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
