defamation

Etymology

From Old French diffamacion (French diffamation), from Latin diffāmātiō.

noun

1. The act of injuring another person's reputation by any slanderous communication, written or oral; the wrong of maliciously injuring the good name of another.
   An hour later, when the Fox board approved the wire payment for $787.5 million — one of the largest known defamation settlements in history — Fox acknowledged what we needed it to acknowledge: spreading false claims comes with a huge price tag. 2023-04-21, John Poulos, “Dominion’s C.E.O.: Why We Settled the Lawsuit Against Fox News”, in The New York Times, →ISSN