Malice is the desire to hurt someone or see them suffer. When someone acts with malice, they deliberately want to cause harm or pain, planning their actions to make someone else feel bad or experience problems. A person showing malice might spread cruel rumors about a classmate they dislike, not because the rumors are true but because they want to damage that person's reputation and friendships.

Malice is different from accidents or honest conflicts. If you accidentally bump into someone in the hallway, that's not malice. If you argue with your sister about whose turn it is to choose the movie, that's not malice either. But if you hide her homework because you want her to get in trouble, that's acting with malice.

The word often appears in legal contexts. Courts distinguish between actions done with malice and those done accidentally or carelessly. Someone who damages property with malice intends to cause harm, while someone who breaks a window with a badly aimed baseball didn't mean any harm at all.

The opposite of malice might be goodwill or kindness: wanting good things for others instead of wanting them to suffer. When you act without malice, you might make mistakes or cause problems, but you're not trying to hurt anyone on purpose.