malignancy

English edit

malignant +‎ -cy or malign +‎ -ancy

malignancy (countable and uncountable, plural malignancies)

The state of being malignant or diseased.
A malignant cancer; specifically, any neoplasm that is invasive or otherwise not benign.
That which is malign; evil, depravity, malevolence.
- c. 1601–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “Twelfe Night, or What You Will”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene i]:
  The malignancy of my fate might perhaps distemper yours.
- 1902, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles‎^[1]:
  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.
- 1990 August 31, Amy Hoffman, “"Crazy" Or Just Crazy?”, in Gay Community News, volume 18, number 7, page 11:
  Because of the dearth of recent feminist writing about conditions in mental institutions, it's possible for us to image that they must have improved since the mid-'70s. Millett reminds us forcefully of the hellishness and malignancy of these places, where mind-altering drugs are prescribed punitively or at random, attendants are abusive, food is unhealthy, and numbing boredom, ugliness, pain and filth prevail.

state of being malignant

malignant cancer

that which is malign, evil, malevolence