mali

Malis (etymology 1) or gardeners shifting seedlings from nursery beds into polybags at the Aravali Biodiversity Park, Gurgaon, Haryana, India.

Borrowed from Hindi माली (mālī, “gardener”), from Sanskrit माली (mālī, “wreath-maker, garland-maker; florist; gardener”), मालिन् (mālin, “florist; gardener”), from माला (mālā, “wreath, garland; chaplet, crown”).[1][2]

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈmɑːli/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈmɑli/, /ˈmæ-/
• Rhymes: -ɑːli, -æli
• Hyphenation: ma‧li

mali (plural malis)

1. (India, South Asia) A member of a caste in South Asia whose traditional occupation is gardening; hence, any South Asian gardener. [from mid 18th c.]
   • 1840, G. T. Frederic Speede, Indian Hand-book of Gardening; Containing Directions for the Management of the Kitchen and Flower Garden, etc. etc. in India: […], Calcutta: W. Thacker & Co. St. Andrew's Library, →OCLC, page 1:

     [H]ence the slow progress hitherto made in the cultivation of such produce of the garden as is generally held in estimation by the European portion of the community, left as it generally is, to the simple Hindoo mallee (or gardener,) it is not to be wondered at, that our bazars want what are deemed the more delicate articles of vegetable production for the table; […]

   • 1848, “Report of Exhibitions of Vegetables, Fruits, Flowers and Agricultural Produce, Held at Bhaugulpore, on 11th February and 25th May, 1848. (Communicated by Major [T. E. A.] Napleton, Honorary Secretary Branch Agri-Horticultural Society.)”, in Journal of the Agricultural & Horticultural Society of India, volumes VI, part II (Correspondence and Selections), number 3, Calcutta: Bishop's College Press, →OCLC, page 125:

     Prizes were awarded to ten other mallees for best samples of vegetables, fruits and flowers, and last though not least we have to note, that a prize of two rupees was awarded to the mallee of Robert Fulton, Esq., of Sultangunge, for a remarkably fine bunch of grapes, clearly showing that either the soil of Mr. Fulton's garden, the climate of Sultangunge, or the skill of that gentleman's gardener, are highly favorable to the growth, and bringing to maturity of this delicious fruit.

   • 1871 November 29, “Cachar: Further Correspondence on the Subject of the Looshai Raids and the Consequent Hostilities (in Continuation of Paper, No. 398, of 1871)”, in Accounts and Papers: […], volumes X (East India—continued), [London]: […] The House of Commons, […], published 28 May 1872, →OCLC, page 301:

     I sent down dhobies, sweepers, cooks, and mallees, last to dig trenches for burying the dead, when burning was not possible.

   • 1924 June 4, E[dward] M[organ] Forster, chapter XXII, in A Passage to India, London: Edward Arnold & Co., →OCLC, part II (Caves), page 203:

     He found, as he expected, that the poor girl was crying. And, as always, an Indian close outside the window, a mali in this case, picking up sounds.

   • 1934 October, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Burmese Days, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, →OCLC; republished as chapter 2, in Burmese Days (ebook no. 0200051h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, November 2015:

     A nearly naked mali, watering-can in hand, was moving in the jungle of flowers like some large nectar-sucking bird.

   • 2008, Amitav Ghosh, chapter 5, in Sea of Poppies, London: John Murray, →ISBN, pages 91–92:

     The grounds of the estates were extensive enough to provide each mansion with a surrounding park, and these were, if anything, even more varied in design than the houses they enclosed – for the malis who tended the gardens, no less than the owners themselves, vied to outdo each other in the fancifulness of their plantings, creating here a little patch of topiary and there an avenue of trees, trimmed in the French fashion; […]

• mallee
• molly

Borrowed from Xhosa imali, Zulu imali (“money”), both ultimately from Swahili mali (“riches, wealth; property”), from Arabic مَال (māl, “money; affluence, wealth; possessions, property”).[3] Some dictionaries[4] suggest an origin in English money instead, making no attempt to account for the distribution of the loanword nor the proposed shift from /n/ to /l/, both of which make this unlikely.

• (Received Pronunciation, General South African) IPA^(key): /ˈmɑːli/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈmɑli/
• Rhymes: -ɑːli
• Hyphenation: ma‧li

mali (uncountable)

1. (South Africa) Money, cash. [from mid 19th c.]

Borrowed from Latin malī, a plural form of malus (“adverse, unfavourable, unfortunate, unlucky; destructive, hurtful; bad, evil”) (probably ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)mel- (“erroneous, false; bad, evil”)).

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈmeɪlaɪ/, /ˈmɑː-/, /ˈmæ-/

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• Audio (Southern England)

  (file)

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈmeɪlaɪ/, /ˈmæ-/
• Hyphenation: ma‧li

mali

1. plural of malus
   • c. 1997, ASTIN Bulletin, page 48:

     The existence of boni and mali for the different risks can be interpreted through the sign of estimated covariances.

   • 2000, Jean Pinquet, “Experience Rating through Heterogeneous Models”, in Georges Dionne, editor, Handbook of Insurance, Kluwer Academic Publishers, page 462:

     If the boni and mali do not depend on the frequency of claims, the average bonus-malus coefficient increases with the frequency.

   • 2014, Akmal Akramkhanov, Bernhard Tischbein, Usman Khalid Awan, “Effective management of soil salinity – revising leaching norms”, in John P. A. Lamers, Asia Khamzina, Inna Rudenko, Paul L. G. Vlek, editors, Restructuring Land Allocation, Water Use and Agricultural Value Chains: Technologies, Policies and Practices for the Lower Amudarya Region, V & R unipress, Bonn University Press, →ISBN, page 131:

     Akramkhanov et al. (2010) also suggested a system of boni and mali on taxes to support the implementation of measures to achieve both water saving and salinity control (Table 3.3.1).

• hom mali rice (etymologically unrelated)

• Alim, Liam, Lima, Mila, alim, lima, mail

• IPA^(key): /mali/

mali

1. draw; something that’s equal or in balance of each other.

• IPA^(key): /ˈmali/
• Rhymes: -ali

mali

1. inflection of mal:
   1. definite nominative singular
   2. indefinite dative/ablative singular

mali

1. ball

• “Entry #”, in 阿美語中部方言辭典 [Dictionary of the Central Dialect of Amis]‎ (in Chinese), Taiwan: Council of Indigenous Peoples, 2021

mali

1. ball

mali

1. wonderful, fantastic

• mɛli

mali

1. hippopotamus

From Swedish malört.

• IPA^(key): /ˈmɑli/, [ˈmɑ̝li]
• Rhymes: -ɑli
• Syllabification^(key): ma‧li

mali

1. wormwood (Artemisia absinthium)

• koiruoho

• “mali”, in Kielitoimiston sanakirja [Dictionary of Contemporary Finnish]‎ (in Finnish) (online dictionary, continuously updated), Kotimaisten kielten keskuksen verkkojulkaisuja 35, Helsinki: Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus (Institute for the Languages of Finland), 2004–, retrieved 2023-07-03

• Ilma, Mila, ilma, lima

mali m (uncountable)

1. Mali (language)

• “mali”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé [Digitized Treasury of the French Language], 2012.

• IPA^(key): /ˈma.li/
• Rhymes: -ali
• Hyphenation: mà‧li

mali m

1. plural of male

• almi, lima, mail, mila

From Proto-Sino-Tibetan *b-ləj (“four”). Cognate with Burmese လေး (le:), S'gaw Karen လွံၢ် (lwee̱), Nuosu ꇖ (ly), Tibetan བཞི (bzhi), Sikkimese ཞི (zhi).

mali

1. four

• maling

mali

1. tonight
2. late afternoon

• Marian Klamer (1998) A Grammar of Kambera, Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter, →ISBN, page 213

mali

1. ball

malī

1. inflection of malus:
   1. nominative/vocative plural
   2. genitive singular

mālī

1. inflection of mālus:
   1. nominative/vocative plural
   2. genitive singular

mali

1. second-person singular past indicative of malt

mali

1. peanut

• IPA^(key): /²mɑː.lɪ/, /²mɑː.ɽɪ/

mali

1. (non-standard since 2012) feminine singular of malen
2. (non-standard since 2012) neuter singular of malen

mali

1. (non-standard since 2012) supine of mala

• lami, lima, mila

• IPA^(key): /ˈma.li/

• Audio

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ali
• Syllabification: ma‧li
• Homophone: Mali

mali

1. virile nominative/vocative plural of mały

• IPA^(key): /ma.ˈli/, [ma.ˈli]

mali

1. ball

From Latin male. Compare Italian male.

mali

1. (Campidanese) badly

mali

1. inflection of mal:
   1. masculine nominative/vocative plural
   2. definite masculine nominative/vocative singular
   3. definite inanimate masculine accusative singular

From Latin malus. Compare Italian mali, male.

• IPA^(key): /ˈma.li/
• Hyphenation: mà‧li

mali m pl or f pl

1. masculine plural of malu; bad.
2. feminine plural of malu

mali m (plural mali)

1. evil, harm

• IPA^(key): [ˈmali]

mali

1. plural l-participle of mať

Borrowed from Arabic مَال (māl, “property”).

• Audio (Kenya)

  (file)

mali (ma class, plural only)

1. wealth, riches
2. property

This word is morphologically plural but semantically singular. If a plural sense is required, it may be put in the n class.

• → Ila: madi
• → Northern Ndebele: imali
• → Rwanda-Rundi: imari
• → Shona: mari
• → Tswana: madi
• → Xhosa: imali
• → Zulu: imali
  • → English: mali

• IPA^(key): /maˈliʔ/, [mɐˈliʔ]

• IPA^(key): /maˈleʔ/, [mɐˈlɛʔ] (colloquial)
• Hyphenation: ma‧li

malî (Baybayin spelling ᜋᜎᜒ)

1. wrong

   Synonym: lihis

   Antonyms: tama, wasto

Compare Malay mali (“Leea indica”) and Malay mali-mali (“Leea angulata”).

• IPA^(key): /ˈmali/, [ˈma.lɪ]
• Hyphenation: ma‧li

mali (Baybayin spelling ᜋᜎᜒ) (botany)

1. bandicoot berry (Leea indica)

• lima

• malî

From Ottoman Turkish مالی (mali), from Arabic مَالِيّ (māliyy).

mali

1. financial, fiscal

• emtia
• mal

• Nişanyan, Sevan (2002–) “mali”, in Nişanyan Sözlük

mali

1. mallee