Definition of "malignancy"

malignancy

/məˈlɪɡ.nən.si/

noun
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.
  Quotations
  The malignancy of my fate might perhaps distemper yours.
  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, [Act II, scene i]
  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.
  1902, Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles‎