Word of the Day: MALEFACTOR
Offender or evildoer
malefactor (noun) - a person who does harm or evil, especially to another person [mal-uh-fak-ter]
BREAKDOWN: MAL- (evil) + FAC- (to make or do) + -OR (one who does)
See also: artifice, beneficiary, edifice, facsimile, factotum, officious, ramification, simulate, suffice, verisimilitude
“Mankind divides itself into two classes—benefactors and malefactors. The second class is vast; the first a handful.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
The FAC- root might be the most productive in English — factory, facile, manufacture, facility, even "feat" (via Old French). But what hits me is the Emerson quote. He's not just using malefactor etymologically; he's making a claim about human nature. Benefactors as "a handful" against a vast class of malefactors. Dark math, but the root breakdown makes you feel it: one who *does* evil vs. one who *does* well. The action is the same. The prefix is the whole moral difference.