malevolent
adjective
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On the Origin of Malevolent
That malevolent begins with male- does not imply any connection with gender. The word's initial component comes ultimately from the Latin adverb male "badly"; English male "a man or a boy," by contrast, descends from the unrelated Latin noun masculus "male." Malevolent was taken into English directly from the Latin malevolens "ill-disposed, spiteful," which paired male with volens, the present participle of a verb meaning "to wish." In Latin, the combination literally meant "wishing ill." The "wishing" component of malevolent may also be found in its antonym benevolent "kind and generous" (from Latin benevolens, literally, "wishing well") and in a rare English word, somnivolency ("a sleep-inducing agent"), in which it is yoked with somni- "sleep" (from Latin somnus) in a compound literally meaning "inclination to sleep."
Examples of malevolent in a Sentence
Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery By Another Name, 2008
The sky looks heavy enough to sink and crush us when we see another twister bullying across the fields—a squat, malevolent-looking wedge.
—Priit J. Vesilind, National Geographic, April 2004
No bigger than most house cats, it is possessed of such formidable armor and malevolent mien that when the makers of the latest Godzilla epic went looking for a prototype, they selected this lizard …
—Peter Benchley, National Geographic, April 1999
The predominant spirit is very un-American; a kind of malevolent, drifting determinism pervades human beings who cannot, or do not want to, cope.
—John Fowles, Atlantic, August 1986
the novel grossly oversimplified the conflict as a struggle between relentlessly malevolent villains on one side and faultless saints on the other
Paul Du Quenoy, MSNBC Newsweek, 27 Mar. 2025
Last seen on Broadway in the excellent 2019 solo one-acts Sea Wall/A Life, Gyllenhaal bounds, loose-limbed and bursting with malevolent energy, onto the Barrymore stage and barely takes a breath for the next nearly three hours.
—Greg Evans, Deadline, 23 Mar. 2025
And what was the House Un-American Activities Committee but one big, malevolent exercise in gossip-mongering?
—Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker, 17 Mar. 2025
However, that itch turns out to be much darker and more malevolent than anyone could imagine.
—Simon Thompson, Forbes, 14 Mar. 2025
See All Example Sentences for malevolent
Cite this Entry
“Malevolent.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/malevolent. Accessed 19 Apr. 2025.
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malevolent
adjective
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