SPITEFUL

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does spiteful mean? 

• SPITEFUL (adjective)
  The adjective SPITEFUL has 1 sense:

1. showing malicious ill will and a desire to hurt; motivated by spite

  Familiarity information: SPITEFUL used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• SPITEFUL (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Showing malicious ill will and a desire to hurt; motivated by spite

Synonyms:

despiteful; spiteful; vindictive

Context example:

a vindictive man will look for occasions for resentment

Similar:

malicious (having the nature of or resulting from malice)

Derivation:

spitefulness (malevolence by virtue of being malicious or spiteful or nasty)

spitefulness (feeling a need to see others suffer)

 Context examples 

Then the princess came in, and as she passed by them she had something spiteful to say to every one.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Small waves, with spiteful foaming crests, continually broke over me and into my mouth, sending me off into more strangling paroxysms.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

But there was much to be talked of in marrying her; and the good-natured wishes for her well-doing which had proceeded before from all the spiteful old ladies in Meryton lost but a little of their spirit in this change of circumstances, because with such an husband her misery was considered certain.

(Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen)

Everybody knows you are the most selfish, heartless creature in existence: and I know your spiteful hatred towards me: I have had a specimen of it before in the trick you played me about Lord Edwin Vere: you could not bear me to be raised above you, to have a title, to be received into circles where you dare not show your face, and so you acted the spy and informer, and ruined my prospects for ever.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

“There’s an end to all thy beauty,” said the spiteful queen, and went away home.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Too often she betrayed this, by the undue vent she gave to a spiteful antipathy she had conceived against little Adele: pushing her away with some contumelious epithet if she happened to approach her; sometimes ordering her from the room, and always treating her with coldness and acrimony.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

He told her that he had been enchanted by a spiteful fairy, who had changed him into a frog; and that he had been fated so to abide till some princess should take him out of the spring, and let him eat from her plate, and sleep upon her bed for three nights.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

In a state between sleeping and waking, you noticed her entrance and her actions; but feverish, almost delirious as you were, you ascribed to her a goblin appearance different from her own: the long dishevelled hair, the swelled black face, the exaggerated stature, were figments of imagination; results of nightmare: the spiteful tearing of the veil was real: and it is like her.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)