malice (English)

Where does "malice" come from?

English malice came from Middle English malice, which was borrowed from Old French malice and ultimately from Latin malitia, meaning “badness,” “ill-will,” or “spite.” Latin malitia was built from malus, “bad,” so the word’s history moves from the general idea of badness to the more pointed sense of hostile intent or delight in another’s harm. The deeper origin of Latin malus is uncertain, but it may go back to a Proto-Indo-European root meaning “false” or “bad.”

Full etymology tree

• malice (English), 'Intention to harm or deprive in an illegal or immoral way. Desire to take pleasure in another's misfortune.'
  • inherited from malice (Middle English)
    • borrowed from malice (Old French), 'malice, evilness, evil intentions'
      • borrowed from malitia (Latin), 'a bad quality; badness, wickedness'
        • compound of malus (Latin), 'unpleasant, distressing, painful, nasty, bad'
          • inherited from *malos (Proto-Italic)
            • derived from *(s)mel- (Proto-Indo-European), 'false, erroneous'
            • derived from *(s)mal- (Proto-Indo-European), 'small'
        • suffix -itia (Latin), '-ness, -ity; Used to form nouns describing the condition of being something.'
          • derived from -ia (Latin), 'Used to form a first declension feminine abstract noun, usually from an adjective ending in -us, or (rarely in later Latin) one ending in -ius, or from a present participle stem, and occasionally from a root noun.'

Direct ancestors

• malice (Old French)
• malitia (Latin)

Updated March 2026

Etymology data from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · About Miraris