maleficiary

English

Noun

maleficiary (plural maleficiaries)

  1. One who suffers harm from something.
    Antonym: beneficiary
    • 1912, William Harvey Allen, Modern philanthropy; a Study of Efficient Appealing and Giving‎[1], Dodd. Mead and Company, page 148:
      To learn whether we as a nation may be either the beneficiary or maleficiary of this princely private interest we must ask what happens as the result of such interest
    • 1996, Christopher B. Ricks, Essays in Appreciation‎[2], Clarendon Press, →ISBN, page 348:
      Literary criticism is not only the beneficiary of this continuity of medium but the maleficiary. For every occasion on which literary criticism is thereby enabled to be more precisely applicable and substantiable than, say, criticism of music (which does not manifest itself for most purposes in the medium of music), there will be at least the danger of an occasion on which literary criticism will succumb to the incitements endemic to such continuity.
    • 2004, Robert C. Roberts, The Psychology of Gratitude‎[3], Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 66:
      Just as gratitude is structured by three major terms, the beneficiary, the benefice, and the benefactor, resentment is structured by three major terms that we might call the maleficiary, the malefice, and the malefactor.
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