malicious
adjective
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Malicious, Malevolent, and Malice
Malicious and malevolent are close in meaning, since both refer to ill will that desires to see someone else suffer. But while malevolent suggests deep and lasting dislike, malicious usually means petty and spiteful. Malicious gossipers are often simply envious of a neighbor's good fortune. Vandals may take malicious pleasure in destroying and defacing property but usually don't truly hate the owners. Malice is an important legal concept, which has to be proved in order to convict someone of certain crimes such as first-degree murder.
Examples of malicious in a Sentence
Joyce Carol Oates, New York Times Book Review, 5 Nov. 2000
A cunning and malicious crook who suckered him without half trying.
—Philip Roth, American Pastoral, 1997
Frank sensed her discomfort and took a certain malicious pleasure in it, enacting all the while his perfect innocence.
—John Updike, The Afterlife, 1994
a malicious distortion of the truth
the neighborhood chatterbox has again been spreading malicious gossip
Andrew Sever, Forbes.com, 28 May 2026
The addition was a prompt injection, a form of AI attack that exploits an LLM’s inability to distinguish between legitimate user prompts and those from unauthorized, potentially malicious third parties.
—Dan Goodin, ArsTechnica, 28 May 2026
GitHub has had its share of security woes recently, including everything from massive leaks to people using the platform to spread malicious code.
—Alan Henry, PC Magazine, 22 May 2026
There have been other incidents in which promotion or the result of a knockout match have been overridden by off-field misdemeanours, but none were deliberate or malicious breaches.
—Jordan Campbell, New York Times, 21 May 2026
See All Example Sentences for malicious
Cite this Entry
“Malicious.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/malicious. Accessed 30 May. 2026.
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malicious
adjective
Legal Definition
malicious
adjective
