malefacture

English

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin malefactūrus, future active participle of malefaciō (“to do evil or harm, to injure”) + -ure (noun-forming suffix).

Noun

malefacture (countable and uncountable, plural malefactures)

1. (obsolete) An act of doing evil; a criminal act; malefaction, maleficence.

   Antonym: benefacture

   • 1635, Tho[mas] Heywood, “The Principats”, in The Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells. Their Names, Orders and Offices; The Fall of Lucifer with His Angells, London: […] Adam Islip, page 412:

     The putred Fountaine, and bitumenous VVell, / From whence all Vice and malefactures ſwell.

Further reading

• John A. Simpson and Edmund S. C. Weiner, editors (1989), “malefacture”, in The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, →ISBN.

Latin

Participle

malefactūre

1. vocative masculine singular of malefactūrus