calumny

[ kal-uhm-nee ]

/ ˈkæl əm ni /

a false and malicious statement designed to injure the reputation of someone or something: The speech was considered a calumny of the administration.

the act of uttering calumnies; slander; defamation.

Origin of calumny

1400–50; late Middle English < Latin calumnia, equivalent to calumn-, perhaps originally a middle participle of calvī to deceive + -ia -y³)

2 libel, vilification, calumniation, derogation.

One imagines that the latest pope, a Jesuit, is familiar with the centuries of calumny that have been heaped upon his forebears.

Thank God Pope Francis Is a Jesuit |Jonathan Wright |March 16, 2013 |DAILY BEAST
Neither envy nor calumny had the least influence over me, or I felt it only from persons who had not the power to injure me.

My Ten Years' Imprisonment |Silvio Pellico
The world was reduced to calumny, or, which it thought funnier, to laughing at his peculiarities; he went by the name of Combabus.

Cousin Betty |Honore de Balzac
Meanwhile he secretly reflects upon the particular sort of calumny that will have the greatest degree of verisimilitude.

Human Intercourse |Philip Gilbert Hamerton

How little foundation there is for this calumny is sufficiently apparent to our readers.

Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 2 |Henry Hallam
At that very moment the morning papers were being distributed bearing a burden of calumny.

The Captain of the Gray-Horse Troop |Hamlin Garland

calumny

/ (ˈkæləmnɪ) /

the malicious utterance of false charges or misrepresentation; slander; defamation

such a false charge or misrepresentation

C15: from Latin calumnia deception, slander