Word.ws English Dictionary

malum in se

malum in se noun: a wrong in itself; that which is injurious in its consequence.

Noun

malum in se (plural mala in se)

  1. (literally) A wrong in itself; that which is injurious in its consequence.
  2. The Latin phrase used in law to refer to crimes that are illegal from the nature of crime, that is, inherently evil without any fact of being noticed or punished, as opposed to malum prohibitum. Used to develop common law crimes.

Forms of malum in se

pluralmala in se

Origin of malum in se

From Latin malum, the neuter of malus (“bad”) + in (“in”) + se, form of sui (“oneself, itself”).

Questions about malum in se

What does malum in se mean?
Malum in se means a wrong in itself; that which is injurious in its consequence.
What part of speech is malum in se?
Malum in se is a noun.
What is the plural of malum in se?
The plural of malum in se is mala in se.

Words near malum in se in the dictionary

  1. malukhiyah
  2. Maluku
  3. Maluku Islands
  4. Malukus
  5. malum
  6. malum in se
  7. malum prohibitum
  8. malumi
  9. malumis
  10. malums
  11. Malungeon

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: malum in se (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.

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