To say bad or harmful things about someone or something, often unfairly; to speak evil of or slander.
From Latin 'malignare,' derived from 'malignus' meaning evil or malicious. The root 'mal-' (bad) combines with '-ign' to describe harmful intent.
In medicine, tumors are classified as 'benign' (harmless) or 'malignant' (harmful, spreading)—the same Latin root 'malign' that means to speak badly is used to describe cancer because both the word and the disease share the sense of being harmful and dangerous.
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