ill-willer

English

Etymology

Possibly a calque of Latin malevolēns from male (“ill”) + volēns (“(one) wishing”).

Pronunciation

• Rhymes: -ɪlə(ɹ)

Noun

ill-willer (plural ill-willers)

1. (obsolete) One who harbours ill will.

   Synonym: evil willer

   Antonyms: good willer, well-willer, well-wisher

   • 1598, Robert Tofte, “A most excellent patheticall, and passionate Letter of Duke D’Epernoun, Minion, unto Henry the third, King of France and Polonia”, in Alexander B. Grosart, editor, Alba, The Months Minde of a Melancholy Lover‎^[1], published 1880, page 136:

     These are the wordes (worthie Prince) wherewith you have pricked forwardes the violence of my malicious ill willers […]

   • 1628, Francis Fletcher et al., The World Encompassed by Sir Francis Drake, London: Nicholas Bourne, 1652, p. 30,^[2]

     Proofs were required and alleadged, so many, and so evident, that the Gentleman himself, stricken with remorse of his inconsiderate and unkind dealing, acknowledged himself to have deserved death, yea many deaths; for that he conspired, not only the overthrow of the action, but of the principall Actor also, who was not a stranger or ill-willer, but a deare and true friend unto him […]

   • 1736, Benjamin Franklin, Preface, Poor Richard's Almanack, 1736, in The Prefaces, Proverbs and Poems of Benjamin Franklin, edited by Paul Leicester Ford, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1889, p. 58,^[3]

     These ill-willers of mine, despited at the great reputation I gain’d by exactly predicting another man’s death, have endeavoured to deprive me of it all at once in the most effectual manner, by reporting that I myself was never alive.

   • 1819, Jedadiah Cleishbotham [pseudonym; Walter Scott], chapter VIII, in Tales of My Landlord, Third Series. […], volumes (please specify |volume=I to IV), Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne and Co.] for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; Hurst, Robinson, and Co. […], →OCLC:

     [Y]our ill-willers may, according to the custom of such persons, impute motives for your journey, whereof, although we know and believe you to be as clear as ourselves, yet natheless their words may find credence in places where the belief in them may much prejudice you […]

   • 1883 June 30 – October 20, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Prologue”, in The Black Arrow: A Tale of the Two Roses, London, Paris: Cassell & Company, […], published 1888, →OCLC:

     […] Sirs, this knave arrow likes me not. But it importeth rather to take counsel. Who should this be? Bethink you, Bennet. Of so many black ill-willers, which should he be that doth so hardily outface us?