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MALIGNITY
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I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Quality of being disposed to evil; intense ill will
Synonyms:
malignance; malignancy; malignity
Classified under:
Nouns denoting attributes of people and objects
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)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Wishing evil to others
Synonyms:
malevolence; malignity
Classified under:
Nouns denoting feelings and emotions
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)
Context examples:
The death of William, the execution of Justine, the murder of Clerval, and lastly of my wife; even at that moment I knew not that my only remaining friends were safe from the malignity of the fiend; my father even now might be writhing under his grasp, and Ernest might be dead at his feet.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
Yet such must be the impression conveyed to you by what appears to be the purport of my actions. Yet I seek not a fellow feeling in my misery. No sympathy may I ever find. When I first sought it, it was the love of virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now that virtue has become to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? I am content to suffer alone while my sufferings shall endure; when I die, I am well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my memory. Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding. I was nourished with high thoughts of honour and devotion. But now crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.
(Frankenstein, by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
