Both Uses of
malignant
in
Middlemarch
- Looking at the mother, you might hope that the daughter would become like her, which is a prospective advantage equal to a dowry—the mother too often standing behind the daughter like a malignant prophecy—"Such as I am, she will shortly be."†
Chpt 3 *
- With the reasons which kept Bulstrode in dread of Raffles there flashed the thought that the dread might have something to do with his munificence towards his medical man; and though he resisted the suggestion that it had been consciously accepted in any way as a bribe, he had a foreboding that this complication of things might be of malignant effect on Lydgate's reputation.†
Chpt 7
Definition:
-
(malignant) harmful or evil
or in medicine: characterized by progressive and uncontrolled harmful growth -- especially of a tumor