Word.ws English Dictionary

malefactive

malefactive adjective: of or pertaining to the linguistic form or case or the semantic role of the person who is harmed or who loses out by an action.

Adjective

malefactive (not comparable)

  1. Of or pertaining to the linguistic form or case or the semantic role of the person who is harmed or who loses out by an action.
    Antonyms:
    benefactive

Noun

malefactive (plural malefactives)

  1. A term or sentence element that serves a malefactive role or that is inflected for the malefactive case.
    Antonyms:
    benefactive

Antonyms of malefactive

Forms of malefactive

pluralmalefactives

Origin of malefactive

Parallel in formation with both malefactor and maleficent (which see). By surface analysis, Latin malefact(us) + -ive.

Questions about malefactive

What does malefactive mean?
Malefactive means of or pertaining to the linguistic form or case or the semantic role of the person who is harmed or who loses out by an action.
What part of speech is malefactive?
Malefactive can be an adjective or a noun.

Words near malefactive in the dictionary

  1. maleevite
  2. malefactee
  3. malefactees
  4. malefaction
  5. malefactions
  6. malefactive
  7. malefactives
  8. malefactivity
  9. malefactor
  10. malefactors
  11. malefactory

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: malefactive (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “malefactive.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/malefactive. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.