MALIGNITY

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does malignity mean? 

• MALIGNITY (noun)
  The noun MALIGNITY has 2 senses:

1. wishing evil to others

2. quality of being disposed to evil; intense ill will

  Familiarity information: MALIGNITY used as a noun is rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• MALIGNITY (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Wishing evil to others

Classified under:

Nouns denoting feelings and emotions

Synonyms:

malevolence; malignity

Hypernyms ("malignity" is a kind of...):

hate; hatred (the emotion of intense dislike; a feeling of dislike so strong that it demands action)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "malignity"):

maleficence (doing or causing evil)

malice; maliciousness; spite; spitefulness; venom (feeling a need to see others suffer)

vengefulness; vindictiveness (a malevolent desire for revenge)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Quality of being disposed to evil; intense ill will

Classified under:

Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects

Synonyms:

malignance; malignancy; malignity

Hypernyms ("malignity" is a kind of...):

evil; evilness (the quality of being morally wrong in principle or practice)

Attribute:

malign (evil or harmful in nature or influence)

Antonym:

benignity (the quality of being kind and gentle)

Derivation:

malign (having or exerting a malignant influence)

 Context examples 

In spite of my malignity, it softened and attracted me.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

She had snarled as she sprang away, baring her white fangs to their roots, all her wistfulness vanishing, being replaced by a carnivorous malignity that made him shudder.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

It would be impossible to describe the expression of hate and baffled malignity—of anger and hellish rage—which came over the Count's face.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

His short dark hair seemed to bristle upwards, his eyes glowed with the intensity of his passion, and his face expressed a malignity of hatred which neither the death of his enemy nor the lapse of years could mitigate.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Rosa Dartle sprang up from her seat; recoiled; and in recoiling struck at her, with a face of such malignity, so darkened and disfigured by passion, that I had almost thrown myself between them.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

One great excellency in this tribe, is their skill at prognostics, wherein they seldom fail; their predictions in real diseases, when they rise to any degree of malignity, generally portending death, which is always in their power, when recovery is not: and therefore, upon any unexpected signs of amendment, after they have pronounced their sentence, rather than be accused as false prophets, they know how to approve their sagacity to the world, by a seasonable dose.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

It is not pity that you feel; you lament only because the victim of your malignity is withdrawn from your power.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

She attended her sickbed; her watchful attentions triumphed over the malignity of the distemper—Elizabeth was saved, but the consequences of this imprudence were fatal to her preserver.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

He approached; his countenance bespoke bitter anguish, combined with disdain and malignity, while its unearthly ugliness rendered it almost too horrible for human eyes.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)

He showed unparalleled malignity and selfishness in evil; he destroyed my friends; he devoted to destruction beings who possessed exquisite sensations, happiness, and wisdom; nor do I know where this thirst for vengeance may end.

(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)