Malicious
//məˈlɪʃəs// adj
adj ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
Adjective
- 1 Intending to do harm; characterized by spite and malice.
"He was sent off for a malicious tackle on Jones."
Adjective
- 1 having the nature of or resulting from malice wordnet
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"Malicious gossip spreads like wildfire. I guess that's why they say bad news travels fast."
Etymology
From Middle English malicious, from Old French malicios, from Latin malitiōsus, from malitia (“malice”), from malus (“bad”). Displaced native Middle English ivelwilled and ivelwilly (“malicious”), related to Old English yfelwillende (literally “evil-willing”). By surface analysis, malice + -ious.
Related phrases
More for "malicious"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.