benevolent
adjective
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Benevolent Has a Good History
One who is benevolent genuinely wishes other people well, a meaning reflected clearly in the word's Latin roots: benevolent comes from bene, meaning "good," and velle, meaning "to wish." Other descendants of velle in English include volition, which refers to the power to make one's own choices or decisions, and voluntary, as well as the rare velleity, meaning either "the lowest degree of volition" or "a slight wish or tendency." A more familiar velle descendant stands directly opposed to benevolent: malevolent describes someone or something having or showing a desire to cause harm to another person.
Synonyms
Examples of benevolent in a Sentence
Sebastian Junger, This Old House, March/April 1998
Grandfather sometimes turned on us like a rigged trap, and of course the benevolent gaze of the sage became the glare of the patriarch.
—Darryl Pinckney, High Cotton, 1992
A Southern writer is allowed his eccentricities. The prevailing attitude is a kind of benevolent neglect.
—Walker Percy, "Why I Live Where I Live," 1980,
in Signposts in a Strange Land, 1991
They tore out the windows of the club's simple storefront and bricked them over and left two much smaller windows … so that the look of the club changed from that of a benevolent neighborhood organization to that of a paramilitary one.
—"The Talk of the Town,"
New Yorker, 26 Feb. 1990
a gift from a benevolent donor
He belonged to several benevolent societies and charitable organizations.
Ana Lucia Araujo / Made By History, TIME, 4 Nov. 2024
In recent years, the naive belief held by most Americans, that the Fed is an apolitical body of benevolent technocrats who would never use their immense, ring-of-Sauron-like power for anything but the good of humanity, has evaporated.
—Dave Birnbaum, Forbes, 31 Oct. 2024
Maya moon goddess Ixchel: a benevolent deity with a dark side
Computational astrophysicist and research scientist at Caltech.
—Avery Hurt, Discover Magazine, 14 Oct. 2024
Reflecting the rough class position of Apple’s corporate employees and prime customers, these comedies are situated either in the highest echelons of wealth (see Loot’s benevolent billionaire protag) or settings where the characters are rich enough that material needs never quite come into play.
—Nicholas Quah, Vulture, 27 Sep. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Benevolent.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/benevolent. Accessed 22 Nov. 2024.
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benevolent
adjective
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