Malfeasance

//ˌmælˈfiːzəns// noun

noun ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Wrongdoing. countable, uncountable

    "For starters, back-burnering malfeasance, usually in the form of graft, risks repeating the kind of disastrous mistakes that the United States made in Afghanistan."

  2. 2
    wrongful conduct by a public official wordnet
  3. 3
    Misconduct or wrongdoing, especially by a public official and causing damage. countable, uncountable

    "By then, Mr. Altman had gathered more allies. Mr. Nadella, now confident that Mr. Altman was not guilty of malfeasance, threw Microsoft’s weight behind him."

Synonyms

All synonyms
misconductabuseabuse of officeatrocitybad policybefoulment

Example

More examples

"The accountant who stole from the firm went to jail for corporate malfeasance."

Etymology

From Old French malfaisance, derived from malfaire, maufaire (“to do evil”), from Latin malefaciō (“I do evil”), from male (“evilly”) + faciō (“do, make”).

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