malversation

plural malversations

1. countableuncountableCorrupt behaviour, illegitimate activity, especially by someone in authority.

   the euyl exempil of ther maluersatione prouokyt the pepil til adhere to vice & to detest vertu.

   1549, chapter XIX, in The Complaynt of Scotland

   4 more examples

   The Decreet was for Sallary, and it was offered to be proven, that Rue (for his Malverſation) was by warrand from General Monk, excluded from Collection that year.

   1668 July 3rd, James Dalrymple, “Thomas Rue contra Andrew Houſtoun” in The Deciſions of the Lords of Council & Seſſion I (Edinburgh, 1683), page 548

   The walī looked angrily on my brother, saying: ‘Shameless ill-doer, it is quite clear from these marks upon your back that you have practised every sort of crime and malversation.’

   1923, Powys Mathers, transl., The Thousand Nights and One Night

   I see nothing quite conclusive in the art of temporal government, But violence, duplicity and frequent malversation.

   1935, T.S. Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral, Part I

   In addition to their absolute power they were wasteful and extravagant, their malversations were constant and enormous, and they treated the local whites with an arrogance and superciliousness that galled these little potentates with their two or three hundred slaves.

   1963, C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins, 2nd Revised edition, Vintage Books, published 2023, →ISBN, page 35