Sunday Word: Malediction

[sallymn]

malediction [mal-i-dik-shuhn]

noun:
1 the utterance of a curse against someone or something
2 slanderous accusation or comment

Examples:

Despite this Sisyphean malediction, with each call for new proposals, the community still tries to push its boulder back to the mountaintop. (Robin George Andrews, NASA Just Broke the ‘Venus Curse’: Here's What It Took, Scientific American, June 2021)

Mr Badoglio said he discovered a curse on the director by sleeping in the bedroom of the movie’s stars. Mr Badoglio then spent three months entreating his cemetery spirits to undo the malediction, until Mr Zeffirelli was able to begin filming again. (Laura Rysman, Telling Fashion's Fortune, The New York Times, September 2021)

"Not a promise, not an oath, or a malediction or a curse. Inevitable. Wasn't that how she put it? I told them. Warned them." (Wildbow, Worm)

Five minutes afterwards the piano resounded to the touch of Mademoiselle d'Armilly's fingers, and Mademoiselle Danglars was singing Brabantio's malediction on Desdemona. (Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo)

(click to enlarge)

Origin:
mid-15c, malediccion, 'a curse; condemnation, excommunication,' from Old French maledicion 'a curse' (15c) and directly from Latin maledictionem (nominative maledictio) 'the action of speaking evil of, slander,' in Late Latin 'a curse,' noun of action from past participle stem of maledicere 'to speak badly or evil of, slander,' from male 'badly' + dicere 'to say' (from PIE root deik- 'to show,' also 'pronounce solemnly'). By 1530s as 'evil-speaking, cursing, reviling.' (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Malediction, which at one time could also refer to slander or to the condition of being reviled or slandered, derives (via Middle English and Late Latin) from the Latin verb maledicere, meaning 'to speak evil of' or 'to curse.' Maledicere, in turn, was formed by combining the Latin words male, meaning 'badly,' and dicere, 'to speak' or 'to say.' (Merriam-Webster)