Noun

(malignancies)

The state of being malignant or diseased.

A malignant cancer; specifically, any neoplasm that is invasive or otherwise not benign.

That which is malign; evil, depravity, malevolence.

* Shakespeare

The malignancy of my fate might perhaps distemper yours.

* {{quote-book, year=1902, author=Arthur Conan Doyle, title=The Hound of the Baskervilles citation

, passage=A cold wind swept down from it and set us shivering. Somewhere there, on that desolate plain, was lurking this fiendish man, hiding in a burrow like a wild beast, his heart full of malignancy against the whole race which had cast him out.}}

Noun

(en noun)

(anatomy, immunology) In vertebrates, including humans, a ductless vascular gland, located in the left upper abdomen near the stomach, which destroys old red blood cells, removes debris from the bloodstream, acts as a reservoir of blood, and produces lymphocytes.

A bad mood; spitefulness.

* Alexander Pope

In noble minds some dregs remain, / Not yet purged off, of spleen and sour disdain.

(obsolete, rare) A sudden motion or action; a fit; a freak; a whim.

* Shakespeare

A thousand spleens bear her a thousand ways.

(obsolete) Melancholy; hypochondriacal affections.

* Alexander Pope

Bodies changed to various forms by spleen .

* Wordsworth

There is a luxury in self-dispraise: / And inward self-disparagement affords / To meditative spleen a grateful feast.

A fit of immoderate laughter or merriment.

* Shakespeare

Thy silly thought enforces my spleen .