calumniare

Calumniare is a Latin verb in the present active infinitive meaning to slander or to utter false accusations against someone in order to injure their reputation. The related noun calumnia denotes the act or state of slander; the English word calumny ultimately derives from it. The root calumnia appears in classical Latin literature and legal texts to refer to false accusations before a judge or the community, and it carried stigma as a fault that could be censured or punished in various periods of Roman law.

In classical usage, calumnia encompassed the act of making untrue charges that could defame a person or obstruct justice. In medieval and later Latin, the term continued to function in moral and legal discussion about deceit, false testimony, and the harm caused by slanderous claims. The concept also influenced the development of analogous terms in modern languages.

In modern Italian, the verb calunniare means to slander or to level false accusations at someone, and calunnia denotes the act or crime of calumny. Italian law distinguishes calunnia from diffamazione; calunnia typically involves alleging a crime to a public official, whereas diffamazione covers broader defamatory statements not framed as a criminal accusation. The term and its derivatives remain part of discussions on ethics, rhetoric, and law in Romance-language contexts.

See also: calumny, calumniate, calumniation.