MALEVOLENT

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does malevolent mean? 

• MALEVOLENT (adjective)
  The adjective MALEVOLENT has 2 senses:

1. wishing or appearing to wish evil to others; arising from intense ill will or hatred

2. having or exerting a malignant influence

  Familiarity information: MALEVOLENT used as an adjective is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MALEVOLENT (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Wishing or appearing to wish evil to others; arising from intense ill will or hatred

Context example:

failure made him malevolent toward those who were successful

Similar:

malicious (having the nature of or resulting from malice)

Derivation:

malevolence (wishing evil to others)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Having or exerting a malignant influence

Synonyms:

evil; malefic; malevolent; malign

Context example:

a malefic force

Similar:

maleficent (harmful or evil in intent or effect)

Derivation:

malevolence; malevolency (the quality of threatening evil)

 Context examples 

Curupuri is the spirit of the woods, something terrible, something malevolent, something to be avoided.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Raising his great hands until they touched his chin, he rubbed them softly, and softly chuckled; looking as like a malevolent baboon, I thought, as anything human could look.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

A disorder characterized by an enduring pattern of behavior based on the pervasive belief that the motives of others are malevolent and that they should not be trusted.

(Paranoid Personality Disorder, NCI Thesaurus)

They retired whispering together; and, though her delicate sensibility did not take immediate alarm, and lay it down as fact, that Captain Tilney must have heard some malevolent misrepresentation of her, which he now hastened to communicate to his brother, in the hope of separating them forever, she could not have her partner conveyed from her sight without very uneasy sensations.

(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)

Know, that in the course of your future life you will often find yourself elected the involuntary confidant of your acquaintances' secrets: people will instinctively find out, as I have done, that it is not your forte to tell of yourself, but to listen while others talk of themselves; they will feel, too, that you listen with no malevolent scorn of their indiscretion, but with a kind of innate sympathy; not the less comforting and encouraging because it is very unobtrusive in its manifestations.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

And yet the feeling grew ever stronger in my own mind that something observant and something malevolent was at our very elbow.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

“I would umbly ask, sir,” returned Uriah, with a jerk of his malevolent head, “for leave to write again to mother.”

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

Yet, when this cherished volume was now placed in my hand—when I turned over its leaves, and sought in its marvellous pictures the charm I had, till now, never failed to find—all was eerie and dreary; the giants were gaunt goblins, the pigmies malevolent and fearful imps, Gulliver a most desolate wanderer in most dread and dangerous regions.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Because I have never been without that feeling that something malevolent was watching us.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

There could be little doubt, however, that the stone was aimed at us, so the incident surely pointed to humanity—and malevolent humanity—upon the plateau.

(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)