Malevolence

//məˈlɛvələns// noun

noun ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Hostile attitude or feeling. countable, uncountable

    "to show someone malevolence"

  2. 2
    the quality of threatening evil wordnet
  3. 3
    Behavior exhibiting a hostile attitude. countable, uncountable
  4. 4
    wishing evil to others wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
ill willmaliceabhorrenceabominationacrimonyanglophobia

Example

More examples

"Injured to the very depths of my soul, bleeding still from cruel wounds, I ask that my more intimate feelings and secret hopes may no longer be delivered to the malevolence of the public."

Etymology

From Middle French malevolence, from Latin malevolentia (“malevolence”), derived from malevolēns (“malevolent”).

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.