Etymologically
Log in

malo

History Permalink

Etymology and origin of the Spanish word malo

Confidence
Established
Formation
Inherited
First attested
900s Glosas Silenses More words from the 9th century
Inherited from
Latin malus via Old Spanish
Ultimate origin
Latin malus
Etymology tree
inherited borrowed derived
Latin mālum
Latin mālus
French mal
Spanish malo
From the same root
Latin cotōneum ← mālum
Latin male ← mālus
Latin malifātius ← mālus
Latin malitia ← mālus
English malformation ← mal
French malgré ← mal
French malheur ← mal

Pronunciation

  • /ˈmalo/, [ˈma.lo][1]

Forms

malo (masculine singular before a noun mal, feminine mala, masculine plural malos, feminine plural malas, comparative peor or más malo, superlative malísimo)[1] Before a masculine singular noun the adjective is shortened to mal (un mal día); the comparative is peor or más malo, the superlative malísimo.[1][2] Old Spanish texts have malo, mala, malos and malas, beside a Latinising malam in the earliest record.[3]

Etymology

It is inherited from Old Spanish malo, inherited from Latin malus (“bad”).[4][5][6][1] Corominas notes that the word has been in general use at every period and is shared by all the Romance languages except Romanian.[4]

The same Latin word is Portuguese mau, Galician mao, Catalan mal, French mal and Italian malo.[7][8][1] The adverb mal comes separately from Latin male (“badly”), and as a noun it was in use from the earliest texts, about 1140.[4][5]

The Latin adjective goes back to Proto-Italic *malo-, and it has a cognate in Oscan mallom (“bad”), unless the Oscan word is a loan from Latin.[9] De Vaan cites a proposed Proto-Indo-European *mol-o- (“bad”), compared with Old Irish mell (“destruction”), Ancient Greek μέλεος (méleos, “idle; unhappy”) and Lithuanian mẽlas (“lie”), but he considers it uncertain, since these are isolated words in separate branches.[9][1] An older comparison with μέλας (mélas, “black”) has lost support.[1]

Earliest recorded meaning

The word is recorded from the beginnings of the language, in the Glosas Silenses and the Cantar de mio Cid.[4][5] In Alfonso X's Lapidario (c. 1250–1279) it means “harmful” to health and “unpleasant”, of a smell: la mala olor “the bad smell”; in another Alfonsine text of about 1256 malos omnes are “wicked men”.[10]

Semantic evolution

The main senses, “bad in quality”, “wicked” and “harmful”, have not changed since Old Spanish.[10][4] Covarrubias (1611) already noted that malo was often used for a sick person, as mal was for the illness itself.[11] Autoridades added the senses “perverse” and “sly, cunning”, and the Academy's 1817 edition the construction with an infinitive (malo de servir “hard to serve”) and the sense “naughty”, of children.[12][13] By 1869 the dictionary also listed lo malo es que “the trouble is that” and the sense “worn, shabby”.[14]

As a noun, el malo has long meant “the Devil”, as did Medieval Latin malus; the Academy recorded it in 1817, and Cervantes wrote of el malo, que todo lo malo ordena.[15][13][16] It is still so used in New Mexican Spanish.[17] In the cinema the noun came to mean “the villain”, as in el malo de la película.[6][1]

In the Americas, estar malo “to be ill” has been recorded since 1517 in Puerto Rico; in Puerto Rico, Peru and Chile it came to mean “to be gravely ill”.[18][19][20][16] The noun phrase a la mala “treacherously” is Chilean and Mexican.[6][19]

Timeline

  • 900s – the Glosas Silenses record the word.[5][4]
  • c. 1140 – the Cantar de mio Cid uses malo and the noun mal.[4][5]
  • 1211 – first year of the word in the Old Spanish Textual Archive.[21]
  • c. 1250–1279 – Alfonso X's Lapidario uses it for what is harmful to health.[10]
  • 1517 – first record in the Americas, in Puerto Rico, in the sense “ill”.[18]
  • 1591 – Percyvall glosses it “evil”, with Latin malus.[22]
  • 1611 – Covarrubias notes the use for a sick person.[11]
  • 1817 – the Academy records el malo “the Devil” and malo de with an infinitive.[13]
  • 1884 – the Academy gives the etymology “Del lat. malus” for the first time.[23]

Meanings

Adjective

  1. bad: lacking the qualities that something should have by its nature or purpose: Compré unas tijeras malas que no cortan.[6][1]
  2. harmful to health: El tabaco es malo para los pulmones.[6][1]
  3. Contrary to logic or to morality; wrong.[6]
  4. Of bad life and conduct; wicked, evil; also used as a noun.[6][1]
  5. (chiefly with estar) ill, sick: Hoy no viene porque está malo.[6][1]
  6. Hard to do, followed by de and an infinitive: Esta letra es mala de leer.[6]
  7. unpleasant, painful: Pasamos una noche muy mala.[6]
  8. (with estar) Spoiled, gone off, damaged: La leche está mala.[6][1]
  9. Unskilled, clumsy, especially at one's trade: un cocinero malo.[6][1]
  10. unfavourable: Son malos tiempos para viajar.[6]
  11. (colloquial) Mean, wicked (malvado).[6]
  12. (colloquial) naughty, restless, mischievous, especially of a child.[6]
  13. (El Salvador, Bolivia) Of a person: irascible, bad-tempered.[24]
  14. (Dominican Republic) Of hair: tightly curled and coarse.[25]

Noun

  1. el malo: the Devil (diablo).[6][1]
  2. (colloquial) The villain or bad guy of a story or film;[6][1] el malo de la película, the person blamed for something.[6][1]
  3. (feminine) The malilla, the second-highest card in some card games.[6]

Word family

  • maldad
  • malear
  • malamente
  • malilla
  • malucho
  • maleante
  • mal
  • maleza
  • malicia
  • maligno
  • Latin malus
  • Portuguese mau

Usage notes

The apocopated form mal is used before a masculine singular noun (mal tiempo, but tiempo malo); mal is also the adverb and the noun “evil, harm”, which have their own entry.[1][2][5] With ser the adjective describes a lasting quality (es malo “he is wicked”); with estar a state (está malo “he is ill”, está mala “it has gone off”).[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b Moliner, María (2007), Diccionario de uso del español, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. malo
  3. ^ Diccionario del Español Medieval electrónico (DEMel), data publication 2026 (CC BY-SA), Universität Rostock, p. s.v. malo
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Corominas, Joan; Pascual, José A. (1980–1991), Diccionario crítico etimológico castellano e hispánico, 6 vols., Madrid: Gredos, p. 3, 784
  5. ^ a b c d e f Corominas, Joan (1973), Breve diccionario etimológico de la lengua castellana, 3rd ed., Madrid: Gredos, p. s.v. malo
  6. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s Real Academia Española; Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2014–), Diccionario de la lengua española, 23rd ed., online version 23.8, https://dle.rae.es, p. s.v. malo
  7. ^ García de Diego, Vicente (1985), Diccionario etimológico español e hispánico, 2nd ed., Madrid: Espasa-Calpe (1st ed. 1954), p. art. 4079
  8. ^ Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm (1935), Romanisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, 3rd ed., Heidelberg: Winter, p. s.v. malus
  9. ^ a b de Vaan, Michiel (2008), Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages, Leiden Indo-European Etymological Dictionary Series 7, Leiden; Boston: Brill
  10. ^ a b c Kasten, Lloyd A.; Nitti, John J.; Gago Jover, Francisco (2002–), Diccionario de la prosa castellana del Rey Alfonso X, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (electronic edition 2024), p. s.v. malo
  11. ^ a b Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastián de (1611), Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, Madrid: Luis Sánchez (Biblioteca Wordkers transcription, CC BY 4.0), p. 1104
  12. ^ Real Academia Española (1726–1739), Diccionario de la lengua castellana (Diccionario de Autoridades), 6 vols., Madrid: Francisco del Hierro, p. 4, 465
  13. ^ a b c Real Academia Española (1817), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 5th ed., Madrid: Imprenta Real, p. 545
  14. ^ Real Academia Española (1869), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 11th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de Don Manuel Rivadeneyra, p. 482
  15. ^ Niermeyer, J. F. (1976), Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden: Brill, p. s.v. malus
  16. ^ a b Rodríguez, Zorobabel (1875), Diccionario de chilenismos, Santiago de Chile: Imprenta de El Independiente, p. 30
  17. ^ Cobos, Rubén (1983), A Dictionary of New Mexico and Southern Colorado Spanish, Santa Fe: Museum of New Mexico Press, p. 124
  18. ^ a b Boyd-Bowman, Peter (2003), Léxico hispanoamericano 1493–1993, ed. Ray Harris-Northall and John J. Nitti, New York: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, p. s.v. malo
  19. ^ a b Santamaría, Francisco J. (1942), Diccionario general de americanismos, 3 vols., México: Pedro Robredo, p. 221
  20. ^ Arona, Juan de [Pedro Paz Soldán y Unanue] (1883), Diccionario de peruanismos, Lima: J. Francisco Solís, p. 332
  21. ^ Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies (2026), Old Spanish Textual Archive (OSTA): semi-paleographic transcriptions of Old Spanish texts, ed. Francisco Gago Jover et al., https://www.hispanicseminary.org, p. s.v. malo
  22. ^ Percyvall, Richard (1591), Bibliothecae Hispanicae pars altera: containing a dictionarie in Spanish, English and Latine, London: John Jackson for Richard Watkins, p. 167
  23. ^ Real Academia Española (1884), Diccionario de la lengua castellana, 12th ed., Madrid: Imprenta de D. Gregorio Hernando (the first Academy edition with etymologies), p. 666
  24. ^ Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (2010), Diccionario de americanismos, Lima: Santillana; online at https://www.asale.org/damer, p. s.v. malo
  25. ^ Academia Dominicana de la Lengua; Instituto Guzmán Ariza de Lexicografía (2024), Diccionario del español dominicano, 2nd ed., online at https://ded.igalex.org, p. s.v. malo

Related etymologies

Cite this entry

“Malo.” Etymologically, 7 Nov. 2026, etymologically.com/es/malo. Accessed 7 Nov. 2026.

Last edited on . ·