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say it: SPAHYT-fuhl
spiteful is an adjective meaning "showing malicious ill will and a desire to hurt; motivated by spite". It is pronounced /ˈspaɪtfəl/ — SPAHYT-fuhl. It carries one recorded sense.
showing malicious ill will and a desire to hurt; motivated by spite
“a despiteful fiend”
“a truly spiteful child”
“a vindictive man will look for occasions for resentment”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for spiteful come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.