| / English Dictionary |
MALICE
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
The quality of threatening evil
Synonyms:
malevolence; malevolency; malice
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
Hypernyms ("malice" is a kind of...):
evil; evilness (the quality of being morally wrong in principle or practice)
Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "malice"):
bitchiness; cattiness; nastiness; spite; spitefulness (malevolence by virtue of being malicious or spiteful or nasty)
cruelness; cruelty; harshness (the quality of being cruel and causing tension or annoyance)
beastliness; meanness (the quality of being deliberately mean)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Feeling a need to see others suffer
Synonyms:
malice; maliciousness; spite; spitefulness; venom
Classified under:
Nouns denoting feelings and emotions
Hypernyms ("malice" is a kind of...):
malevolence; malignity (wishing evil to others)
Derivation:
malicious (having the nature of or resulting from malice)
Context examples:
To clear up which, I endeavoured to give some ideas of the desire of power and riches; of the terrible effects of lust, intemperance, malice, and envy.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
It would ill become me to bear malice.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
Devil, cease; and do not poison the air with these sounds of malice.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
But we must stem the tide of malice, and pour into the wounded bosoms of each other the balm of sisterly consolation.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
The last glimpse I had was of the bloated face, blood-stained and fixed with a grin of malice which would have held its own in the nethermost hell.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
What! shall two grown men carry malice for years, and fly like snarling curs at each other's throats?
(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
So White Fang could only eat his heart in bitterness and develop a hatred and malice commensurate with the ferocity and indomitability of his nature.
(White Fang, by Jack London)
Then the blood ran cold in her heart with spite and malice, to see that Snowdrop still lived; and she dressed herself up again, but in quite another dress from the one she wore before, and took with her a poisoned comb.
(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)
I swore and subscribed to these articles with great cheerfulness and content, although some of them were not so honourable as I could have wished; which proceeded wholly from the malice of Skyresh Bolgolam, the high-admiral: whereupon my chains were immediately unlocked, and I was at full liberty.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
When the note was shown to Elinor, as it was within ten minutes after its arrival, it gave her, for the first time, some share in the expectations of Lucy; for such a mark of uncommon kindness, vouchsafed on so short an acquaintance, seemed to declare that the good-will towards her arose from something more than merely malice against herself; and might be brought, by time and address, to do every thing that Lucy wished.
(Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen)
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