Building a Better Vocabulary

z Our key word for mal- is malfunction, meaning “to function badly

or to stop functioning.” As we’ve learned in past lectures, key

words are known words that are useful for unlocking the meaning

of and remembering many unknown words that are derived from

the same root.

z $ODUJHQXPEHURI(QJOLVKZRUGVFRQWDLQWKHSUH¿[mal-. Below are

a few examples:

ż Malign (verb): to speak evil of; to say harmful things that

are untrue; to slander. The silent g in malign represents

another good example of the spelling-meaning connection

we discussed in Lecture 2. That g serves as a visual clue that

malign is related to malignant. Word pairs that contain such

visual clues are common in English and are known as silent/

sounded consonant pairs.

ż Malignant (adjective): dangerous or harmful.

ż Malevolent (adjective): evil, harmful; wishing evil or harm.

ż Malice (noun): a desire to injure or harm another.

ż Malware (noun): software intended to do harm to a computer,

such as a computer virus.

Malcontent (noun)

$SHUVRQZKRLVFKURQLFDOO\GLVVDWLV¿HG

z If you weren’t familiar with malcontent, you could use the related-

words strategy to help you determine its meaning. Look for a word

or word part that you already know within the unknown word. In

this case, you could identify content, and your knowledge of mal-

ZRXOGKHOS\RXDUULYHDWWKHGH¿QLWLRQ³EDGO\FRQWHQW ́RUDSHUVRQ

who is never contented.