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maleficent

adjective

Simple meaning

Harmful or evil in intent or effect.

Pronunciation

Say it like this:

maluhfihsuhnt

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US device voice
IPA pronunciation (US)

ˈmæləfɪsənt

This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.

IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.

Word Review

Definition

Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.

adjective

  1. Harmful or evil in intent or effect

Word at a Glance

Difficulty
C2 · Proficient (estimated)

Word Aura™

How this word commonly comes across.

This meaning: Harmful or evil in intent or effect

Used this way, maleficent is a reasonably familiar word with a clearly unfavourable pull. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.

Emotional tone
Negative
Formality
Neutral
Intensity
Moderate
How common
Moderately common
Connotation
Serious and weighty
Usage feel
Neutral and straightforward

Nearby words

  • malefic , rarer, so it draws attention
  • evil , more casual, better suited to speech than writing

Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.

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Common Patterns and Combinations

How this word naturally appears with others.

maleficent influencemaleficent magicmaleficent powermaleficent witchcraftmaleficent actmaleficent effectsmaleficent spiritmaleficent violence

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Similar Words, What’s the Difference?

Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.

  • malevolent

    Having an evil or harmful influence.

  • malign

    Evil or harmful in nature or influence.

  • malefic

    Having an evil or harmful influence.

More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin

Synonyms

Sense: harmful or evil in intent or effect

malevolentmaleficRaremalignevilInformalbaneful

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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.