These words express some of the least attractive aspects of human nature. Vindictive means spitefully vengeful, and suggests the harbouring of grudges for imagined wrongs until the vindictive person, with satisfaction and perhaps even enjoyment, sees the object of his hatred suffer. Spiteful and rancorous emphasize the bitterness that attends feelings of malice and hate. Rancorous suggests a festering ill will, perhaps stemming from resentment over some real or fancied wrong. It does not, like vindictive and spiteful , necessarily imply a desire to hurt ?only a deep-rooted malice. Resentful is less intense than spiteful , since the spiteful person is actually prompted to vengeful acts, whereas the resentful person’s indignant anger may be suppressed or inhibited. Indeed, resentment often arises from feelings of frustration akin to envy.

• The boy was resentful when the teacher selected another to deliver the speech of welcome; The spiteful girl deliberately broke the doll when she was told she couldn’t keep it.

Mean is applied to base or ungenerous feelings or actions. A mean person or attitude is small-minded, petty and lacking in those qualities of human consideration and fair play that we tend, perhaps too hopefully, to regard as natural attributes of most people.

• Her failure to invite the Harrises simply because they were not wealthy was a mean gesture.

Related to this sense is the informal use common in the Unite States, meaning vicious, ill-tempered or dangerous: a mean horse, ready to buck and throw you if you’re not careful.

Venomous and splenetic refer to feelings of malignant spite. Venomous retains some of its basic serpentine sense of able to give a poisonous sting, and thus stresses effect as well as motive. A venomous review of a book suggests sharp, biting, painfully acute criticism. It also implies a personal and possibly vindictive motive, since the attack is too strenuous to issue from impartiality. Splenetic means fretfully spiteful or peevish. It relates, of course, to the traditional sense of spleen as the seat of various emotions, among them ill temper, spite and melancholy. Thus splenetic acts are moody and unpredictable, and stem from someone’s nature or condition rather than from external causes.

• The last words of the dying man were characteristically splenetic : "Hope to see you soon."

Malicious and malevolent both imply the intent to do evil or to harm. Malicious is applied chiefly to actions and motives, malevolent to personal disposition. Malevolent has more sinister implications than malicious , implying a deep-seated irremediable antipathy that is manifested by wishing another ill: the malevolent nature of a miser; a cunning, malevolent smile; the malicious destruction of school property by vandals; a malicious lie.