malpractice
Americannoun
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Law. failure of a professional person, as a physician or lawyer, to render proper services through reprehensible ignorance or negligence or through criminal intent, especially when injury or loss follows.
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any improper, negligent practice; misconduct or misuse.
noun
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immoral, illegal, or unethical professional conduct or neglect of professional duty
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any instance of improper professional conduct
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of malpractice
Explanation
If you needed your tonsils removed but your surgeon accidentally took out your appendix instead, you could sue her for malpractice, or mistreatment by a doctor that results in harm to the patient. There are many kinds of malpractice, but medical and legal — by a doctor or lawyer — are the most common. Any professional who injures a client or patient through negligence risks being accused of malpractice, and possibly taken to court. The prefix mal means "bad," from the Latin word malus, or "evil." Practice comes from the Modern Latin practicare, "to practice." If a doctor practices medicine badly enough that it hurts someone, that's malpractice.
Vocabulary lists containing malpractice
Legal Lingo, List 5
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More Happy Than Not
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Florida's B.E.S.T. Roots: mal
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
UniCredit has previously rejected allegations of malpractice related to its attempted takeover of Commerzbank.
From Barron's ● Jul. 10, 2026
The malpractice insurance was provided by Beazley, a business liability insurance provider.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 18, 2026
Last year, it accounted for 44% of all student malpractice cases.
From BBC ● Jun. 4, 2026
Local lawyers have been unwilling to take on a malpractice case because Waldorf didn’t die or end up with permanent injuries.
From Salon ● May 27, 2026
He told Deborah he needed to read her mother’s medical records to investigate how the doctors had treated her, and to document any possible malpractice.
From "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks" by Rebecca Skloot
In October 2025, Seoul apologised for the first time for state-sanctioned malpractices, saying "unjust human rights violations" were committed.
From Barron's ● Jun. 4, 2026
It all started in 2015 when accounting malpractices across multiple divisions came to light, with many of them involving top management.
From BBC ● Dec. 20, 2023
There was one rural hospital, the site of various malpractices.
From Salon ● May 3, 2022
“We found exactly the same malpractices in exactly the same districts in 2018 as we did the year before,” Klimek says.
From Scientific American ● Oct. 30, 2018
This was a state of things which readily lent itself to malpractices.
From The History of the Post Office From Its Establishment Down to 1836 by Joyce, Herbert
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.