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MALICIOUS
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Having the nature of or resulting from malice
Example:
took malicious pleasure in...watching me wince
Classified under:
Similar:
despiteful; spiteful; vindictive (showing malicious ill will and a desire to hurt; motivated by spite)
leering (showing sly or knowing malice in a glance)
malevolent (wishing or appearing to wish evil to others; arising from intense ill will or hatred)
beady-eyed (having eyes that gleam with malice)
bitchy; cattish; catty (marked by or arising from malice)
poisonous; venomous; vicious (marked by deep ill will; deliberately harmful)
venomed (full of malice or hate)
vixenish (shrewish and malicious)
Antonym:
unmalicious (not malicious or spiteful)
Derivation:
malice; maliciousness (feeling a need to see others suffer)
Context examples:
I had supposed him to be despising his fellow-creatures in general, but did not suspect him of descending to such malicious revenge, such injustice, such inhumanity as this.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
"Now, Laurie, don't be too fastidious and worldly-minded. If they love one another it doesn't matter a particle how old they are nor how poor. Women never should marry for money..." Amy caught herself up short as the words escaped her, and looked at her husband, who replied, with malicious gravity... Certainly not, though you do hear charming girls say that they intend to do it sometimes.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
It taught him that he had been scarcely more misled by Thorpe's first boast of the family wealth than by his subsequent malicious overthrow of it; that in no sense of the word were they necessitous or poor, and that Catherine would have three thousand pounds.
(Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen)
I heard that with the single exception of Mr. Creakle, Tungay considered the whole establishment, masters and boys, as his natural enemies, and that the only delight of his life was to be sour and malicious.
(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)
He continued to send for me punctually the moment the clock struck seven; though when I appeared before him now, he had no such honeyed terms as love and darling on his lips: the best words at my service were provoking puppet, malicious elf, sprite, changeling, &c.
(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)
He saw that the malicious attempt to hurt him had failed.
(Martin Eden, by Jack London)
Tens of millions of malicious request sources were observed, interfering with legitimate Dyn traffic.
(Distributed malware attacks Dyn DNS, takes down websites in US, Wikinews)
However, a malicious rogue of a skipper went to an officer, and pointing to me, told him, I had not yet trampled on the crucifix; but the other, who had received instructions to let me pass, gave the rascal twenty strokes on the shoulders with a bamboo; after which I was no more troubled with such questions.
(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)
Mrs. Bennet was restored to her usual querulous serenity; and, by the middle of June, Kitty was so much recovered as to be able to enter Meryton without tears; an event of such happy promise as to make Elizabeth hope that by the following Christmas she might be so tolerably reasonable as not to mention an officer above once a day, unless, by some cruel and malicious arrangement at the War Office, another regiment should be quartered in Meryton.
(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)
"I'll try, but it was a very ungentlemanly thing to do, I didn't think you could be so sly and malicious, Laurie," replied Meg, trying to hide her maidenly confusion under a gravely reproachful air.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
