noun
-
the condition or quality of being malign, malevolent, or deadly
-
(often plural) a malign or malicious act or feeling
Synonym Usage
See malevolence.
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of malignity
1350–1400; Middle English malignitee, from Latin malignitās. See malign, -ity
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:
Intimately acquainted with Richard’s malignity, these ruined royals know only too well the toll of his depraved machinations.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 26, 2026
His malignity and psychopathology seem to attract followers when these same characteristics should repulse people.
From Salon ● Mar. 4, 2024
It would seem that the malignity of the troll is inhabiting the Snow Queen’s form.
From The New Yorker ● Dec. 30, 2019
It bore the painting of a woman of strange beauty, but the dark eyes stared into vacancy with a cold malignity of expression.
From Slate ● Oct. 14, 2018
In short, the only exception which could be taken to an accusing witness was malignity.
From A History of The Inquisition of The Middle Ages; volume I by Henry Charles Lea
A dozen, a score of the pallid malignities seemed to pour in toward the center of the grove, where John Parry’s ghost marshaled his companions to fight them off.
From "The Amber Spyglass" by Philip Pullman
Ill-natured tittle-tattle, which should have been instantly nipped in the bud, had been allowed to assume disgraceful proportions; and the Throne itself had become involved in the personal malignities of the palace.
From Queen Victoria by Giles Lytton Strachey
The cabal which gathered head against Bajazet could only whisper its malignities when Mithridate appeared.
From A History of French Literature Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. by Edmund Gosse
Whatever may have been the malignities laid to the charge of the later middle ages, it is certain that the Englishman was on the whole of a reverential type.
From A Cursory History of Swearing by Julian Sharman
Considering his bodily infirmities, his energies and his malignities, which were many and active, were marvellously little abated by time.
From J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
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.
