c. 1300, defamacioun, "disgrace, dishonor, ill repute" (senses now obsolete), from Old French diffamacion and directly from Medieval Latin deffamation, from Latin diffamationem (nominative diffamatio), noun of action from past-participle stem of diffamare "to spread abroad by ill report, make a scandal of," from dis-, here probably suggestive of ruination, + fama "a report, rumor" (from PIE root *bha- (2) "to speak, tell, say").

From late 14c. as "the wrong of injuring another's reputation without justification." From early 15c. as "calumny, slander, an instance of defaming."

past tense and past participle of catch (v.), attested from 14c., predominant after c. 1800, replacing earlier catched. A rare instance of an English strong verb with a French origin. This might have been by influence of Middle English lacchen (see latch (v.)), which also then meant "to catch" and was more or less a synonym of catch (as their noun forms remain), and which then had past tense forms lahte, lauhte, laught. The influence would have happened before latch switched to its modern weak conjugation.

word-forming element making abstract nouns from adjectives and meaning "condition or quality of being ______," from Middle English -ite, from Old French -ete (Modern French -ité) and directly from Latin -itatem (nominative -itas), suffix denoting state or condition, composed of -i- (from the stem or else a connective) + the common abstract suffix -tas (see -ty (2)).

Roughly, the word in -ity usually means the quality of being what the adjective describes, or concretely an instance of the quality, or collectively all the instances; & the word in -ism means the disposition, or collectively all those who feel it. [Fowler]

word-forming element of Greek origin meaning "hater, hatred," before vowels, mis-, from Greek misos "hatred," misein "to hate," of uncertain etymology, perhaps from a Pre-Greek word. It was productive as a word-forming element in ancient Greek, for instance misoagathia "hatred of good or goodness;" misoponein "to hate work." In English it formed many compounds now obscure or recherche, but some perhaps still useful, such as  misocapnic (adj.) "hating (tobacco) smoke," misocyny "hatred of dogs," misoneism "hatred of novelty."

female proper name, shortened form of Mollie, Molly, itself a familiar of Mary. Used from c. 1600 for "prostitute," but in low slang by early 19c. it also meant "female companion not bound by ties of marriage, but often a life-mate" [Century Dictionary]. It became a general word for "woman" in old underworld slang, for instance Moll-buzzer "pickpocket who specializes in women;" Moll-tooler "female pick-pocket." U.S. sense of "a gangster's girlfriend" is by 1923.