maligned

[ muh-lahynd ]

adjective

1. spoken ill of; defamed or slandered:

   I pointed to my unweeded yard full of bees and waxed rhapsodic about the benefits of the maligned dandelion.

   Considered by many to be a usurper and murderer, Richard III is one of the most maligned kings in history.

verb

1. the simple past tense and past participle of malign ( def ).

Other Words From

• un·ma·ligned adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of maligned¹

malign ( def ) + -ed ²( def )

Example Sentences

Commerce will act to ensure that America’s technology—developed and produced according to open and free-market principles—is not used for malign or abusive purposes.

From TechCrunch

The debut comes as other unicorns seeking to go public such as Affirm and Roblox have pushed their IPO timelines to next year after seeing the much maligned “first-day pops” of DoorDash and Airbnb’s respective listings.

From Fortune

Welles, he argued, did not deserve to be so unfairly maligned.

From Vox

I embraced foraging, an oft-maligned word after the chef-bro boom of the 2010s.

From Eater

Measuring such perceptions quantitatively has much room for error, but it’s hard to deny that the scale and consistency of these polls are indicators of the US’s maligned and depleted image and influence in the world today.

From No Straight News

Biographer Andrew Roberts argues that history has maligned Napoleon by lumping him in with totalitarian thugs.

From The Daily Beast

It's a place where minorities are degraded and maligned for fun.

From The Daily Beast

Even the much-maligned Free Syrian Army numbers 70,000 to 90,000.

From The Daily Beast

“Haters gonna hate” makes the person who says it into an automatic martyr, persecuted, misunderstood, maligned.

From The Daily Beast

But a study out of Notre Dame this month appears to offer some support for the much-maligned tests.

From The Daily Beast

One charm it has, which is felt while there and pleasantly remembered in absence—its much-maligned climate.

From Project Gutenberg

Some of them seem to have been the friends and teachers of the far-famed, and I believe unjustly maligned, Robert Browne.

From Project Gutenberg

When we inquire what the Freethinkers, or Rationalists, are, it is readily seen that they have been maligned by "the faithful."

From Project Gutenberg

There is no doubt that the Irish regiments are greatly maligned.

From Project Gutenberg

Even the much maligned crow lives to some extent upon insects.

From Project Gutenberg