calumny

Meanings

1. A false statement made to damage someone's reputation.
2. The act of making such false statements.

Example sentences

• "The senator was a victim of calumny."

  Level C2, Meaning 1

• "She spent years fighting against the calumny."

  Level C2, Meaning 1

• "The newspaper printed a calumny about the mayor."

  Level C2, Meaning 1

• "He rose above the calumny and kept working."

  Level C2, Meaning 2

Synonyms and antonyms

Look-alikes and common mistakes

• slander : Slander is a false spoken statement that harms someone. Calumny is the same idea in a literary word and covers both speech and writing.

Word family and forms

Forms: calumnies

Word partners

Words and phrases that often go with "calumny".

• spread calumny
• a campaign of calumny
• a victim of calumny
• calumny and lies
• suffer calumny
• a vicious calumny

Origin

Calumny comes through Old French from Latin calumnia, which meant a false accusation or a trick. It is a doublet of the English word challenge: two words that began as the same Latin word and then took different paths.

Checked against: Wiktionary, the free dictionary, Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Dictionary.com.

Usage notes

A formal, somewhat literary word; "slander" is the more everyday term for the same idea.

How to remember it

Calumny sounds like "column": imagine a column in a newspaper that prints lies.

Test yourself

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