malison /mal-i-zən/. noun. A curse. A malediction. The opposite of a benison. From Old French maleiçon (curse, to speak ill).
“What think you of it, Florian? do I chase
The substance or the shadow? will it hold?
I have no sorcerer’s malison on me…”
(Alfred Lord Tennyson)
‘That sort of stuff is useless,’ the photographer ventured—reasonably, lest one of Maitland’s deep Latin malisons extend the curse to his exposure-meter. (Thomas Keneally)
“Woe upon woe; from days of old some god
Laid on the race a malison, and his rod
Scourges each age with sorrows never ending.”
(Sophocles, trans. by Francis Storr)
“A hide of land I give to thee in my steads of Walbrugham, from me and mine to thee and thine aye and for ever; and God’s malison on his head who this gainsays!” (Sir Walter Scott)
“Fear never the brute clouds nor winter-stop
And let the water-belly of ocean roar,
Nor feel the x malisons of other men
(Wallace Stevens)