malevolent
Americanadjective
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wishing evil or harm to another or others; showing ill will; ill-disposed; malicious.
His failures made him malevolent toward those who were successful.
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evil; harmful; injurious.
a malevolent inclination to destroy the happiness of others.
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Astrology. evil or malign in influence.
adjective
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wishing or appearing to wish evil to others; malicious
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astrology having an evil influence
Other Word Forms
- malevolence noun
- malevolently adverb
- unmalevolent adjective
- unmalevolently adverb
Etymology
Origin of malevolent
First recorded in 1500–10; from Latin malevolent-, stem of malevolēns “ill-disposed, spiteful,” from male- male- + volēns “wanting” (present participle of velle “to want, wish for, desire”; will 1 )
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.
They found that when a phishing pop-up had clear malevolent telltales, like misspellings, the phone and PC users tended to avoid it at similar rates.
It’s like a malevolent Ouroboros, where we can’t tell which is the head and which the tail, or which end is swallowing the other.
From Salon
Despite its critics, nationalism isn’t always a malevolent force.
His flights of fancy— malevolent music, undead scholars, imaginary brothers, a cult led by a guru with 93 Ferraris in an “experimental township” called the Moon — are more controlled and add subtle strokes of color.
From Los Angeles Times
One can only wonder at the malevolent pleasure he would have felt at his Cubist masterworks ending up at the Met and not at the Tate or MoMA, which he had disdained for decades.
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.
