malignancy

English

Etymology

malignant + -cy or malign + -ancy

Noun

malignancy (countable and uncountable, plural malignancies)

  1. The state of being malignant or diseased.
  2. A malignant cancer; specifically, any neoplasm that is invasive or otherwise not benign.
  3. That which is malign; evil, depravity, malevolence.
    • Shakespeare
      The malignancy of my fate might perhaps distemper yours.
    • 1902, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles:
      A cold wind swept down from it and set us shivering. Somewhere there, on that desolate plain, was lurking this fiendish man, hiding in a burrow like a wild beast, his heart full of malignancy against the whole race which had cast him out.

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