Although the term refers, apparently, to bad behavior of an officeholder in
office, malversation sounds to me like a word which really ought to
mean a
bad or
evil conversation. After all, isn't misbehavior in office already known as
malfeasance? Does this not already capture the "
mal-"
prefix so given to lend a discomforting aura to words:
maleficent,
malpractice,
malady,
malfunction,
malodorous,
malice. And are there not already words for the bad officeholder purpose sufficient to fill out all the needs of the English language? And yet, is there a word which singly captures the sense of having a conversation which is, for whatever reason, itself harmful, hurtful, turned toward ill ends?
I propose, then,
a repurposing of the word, as is on occasion appropriate in the continuing
evolution of
language; that henceforth the word malversation shall be taken to mean a conversation in which the participants plot bad deeds or speak ill of others. "Becky and Betty were having quite a lurid malversation about Bonnie"; "Diego and Scaramanga malversed about their planned betrayal of the Duke of Blois"; "Mrs. Fitchman delights in malversing about everybody she dislikes."
Let us not let so useful a linguistic opportunity go to waste, but let us instead cast malversations of all stripes into the light!!
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