底子是壞的：有害、帶惡意（形容詞）
這一支就是核心畫面直接當形容詞用。
adjective · C1
Causing harm, or meaning to cause harm. It is used about a force, an influence or someone's intentions rather than about ordinary everyday damage, and it belongs to formal writing.
有害的；心存惡意的
核心畫面
A useful way to hold malign is as the dark half of a pair. Latin built it from malus, bad, and genus, sort or kind, so the picture is of something that is a bad sort at heart — the twin of benign, the good sort. As an adjective that is exactly what it says: an influence or an intention with bad will inside it. As a verb it takes the same bad will and aims it at a person through words, saying things that are not true until other people see that person badly too.
malign 可以想成一對詞裡比較暗的那一半。拉丁文用 malus（壞）加 genus（種類）組成它，畫面接近「本性…更多收起
malign 可以想成一對詞裡比較暗的那一半。拉丁文用 malus（壞）加 genus（種類）組成它，畫面接近「本性就是壞的那一種」。另一半就是 benign，好的那一種。當形容詞時，它講的就是這個底子：一股影響、一個念頭，裡面帶著惡意。當動詞時，同樣的惡意換成用嘴巴出手：說一些不是真的話，讓別人也跟著看低那個人。From the word’s history
Wiktionary traces both the adjective and the verb to Middle English maligne, from Old French, from Latin malignus — malus (bad) plus genus (sort, kind) — and points to benign as the matching form.
Wiktionary 記載形容詞和動詞同一條線：中古英語 maligne，來自古法文，再上溯拉丁文 malignus，由 malus（壞）加 genus（種類）構成，並指出 benign 是對應的另一半。
Wiktionary (kaikki extract, source_refs kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:896720165 and :896731867): 'From Middle English maligne, from Old French maligne, from Latin malignus, from malus (bad) + genus (sort, kind). Compare benign.'
Two branches
把惡意用嘴巴出手：造謠中傷（動詞）
同樣的惡意，換成一條出口：說話。把「壞種」對著一個人用，最常見的方式就是講他不實的壞話。
verb · C1
To say bad things about a person, a group or a thing that are not true, in a way that damages how other people see them.
中傷、說壞話