malevolent

American  

[muh-lev-uh-luhnt] / məˈlɛv ə lənt /

adjective

1. wishing evil or harm to another or others; showing ill will; ill-disposed; malicious.

   His failures made him malevolent toward those who were successful.

2. evil; harmful; injurious.

   a malevolent inclination to destroy the happiness of others.

3. Astrology. evil or malign in influence.

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malevolent British  

/ məˈlɛvələnt /

adjective

1. wishing or appearing to wish evil to others; malicious

2. astrology having an evil influence

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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 )

Explanation

If someone is malevolent, they wish evil on others. If you find yourself approaching someone with a malevolent look in her eye, best to run the other way. Malevolent comes from the Latin word malevolens, which means "ill-disposed, spiteful"; its opposite is benevolent, which means "wishing good things for others." A malevolent person might display satisfaction at someone else's problems. But it's not only individuals who can be malevolent. If you think that television violence influences viewers to violence, you see television as a malevolent force. The stress is on the second syllable: muh-LEV-uh-lent.

Example Sentences

The writer Octavio Paz, the Mexican Nobel laureate, denounced Malinche as a kind of malevolent Eve whose submission to Cortés forever defiled Mexico’s mixed identity.

From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 25, 2026

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.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 10, 2025

We know these animals are not malevolent, just trying to survive, and so the traps dispatch them with as little suffering as possible.

From Slate • Aug. 8, 2025

Nothing that’s happened on any of the network’s shows in the last decade has come close to matching the unconsciously malevolent nonsense of Bravo’s late-aughts one-season-wonders.

From Salon • Aug. 2, 2025

On bad days the orange walls held hands and bent over him, inspecting him like malevolent doctors, slowly, deliberately, squeezing the breath out of him and making him scream.

From "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy

Related Words

• malicious
• malignant
• murderous
• sinister
• vengeful
• vicious
• wicked