malignancy

From malignant +‎ -cy or malign +‎ -ancy or Latin malignantia.^[1]

• IPA^(key): /məˈlɪɡ.nən.si/

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.
   • 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], page 260, column 1:

     [T]he malignancie of my fate, might perhaps diſtemper yours; […]

   • 1901 August – 1902 April, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “Baskerville Hall”, in The Hound of the Baskervilles: Another Adventure of Sherlock Holmes, London: George Newnes, […], published 1902, →OCLC, page 115:

     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.

• malignance
• malignity

• benignancy
• benignity

• malign
• malignly
• malignment