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malus

Pronunciation: [ˈma.ɫʊs]

“malus” is a Latin word. Its 12 meanings in English:

adjective

  1. unpleasant, distressing, painful, nasty, bad
  2. unpleasant to the senses, sight, smell, taste, touch
  3. bad, evil, wicked, mischievous
  4. destructive, hurtful, noxious, evil
  5. unkind, hostile, abusive
  6. associated with bad luck, unlucky, unfavourable, unfortunate, adverse, evil
  7. poor in condition or capacity, inept

noun

  1. an apple tree; specifically, a plant in the genus Malus in the family Rosaceae.
  2. a mast of a ship
  3. a standard or pole to which the awnings spread over the theater were attached
  4. the beam in the middle of a winepress
  5. the corner beams of a tower

Etymology

From mālum n (“apple fruit”). The ending follows the common Latin pattern of having second-declension feminine tree names in -us corresponding to neuter fruit names ending in -um (compare pirus f, pirum and mōrus f, mōrum). The fruit name was borrowed from Doric Greek μᾶλον (mâlon, “apple fruit”), probably ultimately from a substrate root. (Compare Attic μῆλον (mêlon, “apple fruit”), μηλέα…

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Definitions are from Wiktionary, extracted by Kaikki.org, and are available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.