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
Some resistance was more overtly political; the critic Elaine Showalter, on Twitter, decried a plotline of the “saintly academic hero tormented by motiveless malignity of his despicable wife and other monsters.”
From The New Yorker ● Mar. 11, 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
There was no malignity in any of the spells wrought out on that little headland.
From Naples Past and Present by Arthur H. Norway
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
Mr. Kahn, notwithstanding threats and malignities, went out to speak to them—individually, through newspaper articles, or at great mass meetings.
From Right Above Race by Otto Hermann Kahn
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
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
Kultur can by no means dispense with passions, vices and malignities.
From Raemaekers' Cartoon History of the War, Volume 1 The First Twelve Months of War by Louis Raemaekers
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.
