round 3

Malignancy (from the Latin roots -male, "Bad" and -ignos, "Fire") is the tendency of a medical condition, especially tumors, to become progressively worse and to potentially result in death. Malignancy in cancers is characterized by anaplasia, invasiveness, and metastasis. Malignant is a corresponding adjectival medical term used to describe a severe and progressively worsening disease. The term is most familiar as a description of cancer. A malignant tumor may be contrasted with a non-cancerous benign tumor in that a malignancy is not self-limited in its growth, is capable of invading into adjacent tissues, and may be capable of spreading to distant tissues (metastasizing), while a benign tumor has none of those properties. Malignant tumor is synonymous with cancer.

Source: Wikipedia