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

Other Word Forms

• maliciously adverb
• maliciousness noun
• nonmalicious adjective
• nonmaliciously adverb
• semimalicious adjective
• semimaliciously adverb
• unmalicious adjective
• unmaliciously 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

They also warned that the measure risks spiking eel prices and leading to "increased malicious poaching and smuggling".

Read more on Barron's

By presenting malicious tasks as routine security work, they manipulated Claude into executing attack components without recognizing the broader hostile context.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

The Miss Universe Organisation condemned Mr Nawat's behaviour as "malicious" and Mr Rocha, speaking by video from Mexico, told his Thai business partner to just "stop".

Read more on BBC

In November, cyber experts at Google released a research paper which highlighted growing concerns about AI being used by hackers to create brand new forms of malicious software.

Read more on BBC

Hackers often use open-source AI tools to conduct their hacking because open-source code is available for free and can be modified to remove restrictions against malicious activity.

Read more on The Wall Street Journal

Related Words

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