malice

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   The desire to harm others or to see them suffer.

   There was real malice in the way he spoke to her.

2. 2
   noun

   The deliberate intention to do harm, especially as a factor in a crime.

   The court had to decide whether the act was committed with malice.

From Middle English malice, borrowed from Old French malice, from Latin malitia (“badness, bad quality, ill-will, spite”), from malus (“bad”).

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