A.Word.A.Day --malison

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Jun 30, 2025

This week’s theme
Unusual antonyms

This week’s words
malison

Illustration: Anu Garg + AI

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A.Word.A.Day

with Anu Garg

Have you ever wondered why we have wide/width, but not high/highth? The simple answer is, we used to. Highth was the original word, but over time it morphed into the height we use today.

Like rough stones tumbling down a stream, words lose their jagged edges as generations of speakers smooth them away.

But not every word gets polished. Some just get lost in the current, obscured by their more popular opposites. This week, we’re diving in and bringing five of these uncommon antonyms up for air.

malison

PRONUNCIATION:

(MAL-uh-zuhn/suhn)

MEANING:

noun: A curse.

ETYMOLOGY:

From Anglo-French maleiçun (curse), from Latin maledictio (curse), from maledicere (to curse), from mal- (bad) + dicere (to speak). Earliest documented use: 1300.

NOTES:

Today’s word has a better-known synonym, malediction, though both derived from the same Latin root. You could say they are cuss-ins. The opposite is benison, not to be confused with venison (no benison to the deer).

USAGE:

“Dimly he heard Simon’s excited whisper. ‘... A malison on these bonds.’ He felt him straining at his foot shackles.”
John Buchan; The Blanket of the Dark; Hodder & Stoughton; 1931.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. -Frédéric Bastiat, economist and writer (30 Jun 1801-1850)

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