Dictionary.com Word Of The Day
Mar. 01, 2017
malfeasance\mal-FEE-zuh ns\noun
1. Law. the performance by a public official of an act that is legally
unjustified, harmful, or contrary to law; wrongdoing (used especially
of an act in violation of a public trust).
QuotesThe mid-nineteen-seventies was a revolutionary moment in
investigative reportingthe perhaps inevitable aftermath of Woodward
and Bernstein, with stories on C.I.A. operations, military cover-ups,
and Congressional malfeasance all over the front pages.
-- Seymour M. Hersh, "Scooped by Mike Wallace," The New Yorker, April
8, 2012
Origin of malfeasanceTracing the history of the word malfeasance
(with an earlier spelling male-feasance) illegal act, official
misconduct is as disorienting as getting lost in a hall of mirrors.
The phrase Male-feasance and Mis-feasance is first recorded in 1663.
Misfeasance (spelledmisfeasance) wrongful use of lawful authority is
first recorded in Sir Francis Bacons The Elements of the Common Lawes
of England (1630). Male-feasance may be a reworking of misfeasance with
replacement of the combining form mis- with mal-. The law being very
traditional in its terminology, the change of prefix may have been
influenced bymalfeasor (variously spelled) malefactor, which had a
very brief history in printless than a centuryand was obsolete by the
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