Webster
✕

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary · 1913

Malignant

Ma·lig′nant (·nant), a. [L. malignans, -antis, p. pr. of malignare, malignari, to do or make maliciously. See Malign, and cf. Benignant.] 1. Disposed to do harm, inflict suffering, or cause distress; actuated by extreme malevolence or enmity; virulently inimical; bent on evil; malicious.

A malignant and a turbaned Turk. Shak.

2. Characterized or caused by evil intentions; pernicious. "Malignant care." Macaulay.

Some malignant power upon my life. Shak.

Something deleterious and malignant as his touch. Hawthorne.

3. (Med.) Tending to produce death; threatening a fatal issue; virulent; as, malignant diphtheria.

Malignant pustule (Med.), a very contagious disease, transmitted to man from animals, characterized by the formation, at the point of reception of the virus, of a vesicle or pustule which first enlarges and then breaks down into an unhealthy ulcer. It is marked by profound exhaustion and usually fatal. Called also charbon, and sometimes, improperly, anthrax.

Ma·lig′nant (mȧ·lĭg′nant), n. 1. A man of extreme enmity or evil intentions. Hooker.

2. (Eng. Hist.) One of the adherents of Charles I. or Charles II.; — so called by the opposite party.

Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Noah Porter, editor (Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913). Public domain. Text as transcribed by MICRA, Inc., from Project Gutenberg. Changed for Deep Dive Bible: Greek, which our source spelled in Latin letters, set in Greek letters; entries of one spelling merged into one article; Greek words our source left out (shown as “?”), read from the 1898 printing, from the same plates (the Library of Congress’s copy), where the place could be found with certainty. Of the others, 1,362 (a word or a single letter each) were inferred by AI from the context by the dictionary’s own rules and are marked with a wavy underline (tap or point at one to see the note); the rest, which could not be inferred with confidence, are left as “?”.