The Patch

malediction [mal-i-dik-shuhn]

noun:
1 the utterance of a curse against someone or something
2 slanderous accusation or comment

Examples:

Despite this Sisyphean malediction, with each call for new proposals, the community still tries to push its boulder back to the mountaintop. (Robin George Andrews, NASA Just Broke the ‘Venus Curse’: Here's What It Took, Scientific American, June 2021)

Mr Badoglio said he discovered a curse on the director by sleeping in the bedroom of the movie’s stars. Mr Badoglio then spent three months entreating his cemetery spirits to undo the malediction, until Mr Zeffirelli was able to begin filming again. (Laura Rysman, Telling Fashion's Fortune, The New York Times, September 2021)

"Not a promise, not an oath, or a malediction or a curse. Inevitable. Wasn't that how she put it? I told them. Warned them." (Wildbow, Worm)

Five minutes afterwards the piano resounded to the touch of Mademoiselle d'Armilly's fingers, and Mademoiselle Danglars was singing Brabantio's malediction on Desdemona. (Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo)

(click to enlarge)

Malediction, which at one time could also refer to slander or to the condition of being reviled or slandered, derives (via Middle English and Late Latin) from the Latin verb maledicere, meaning 'to speak evil of' or 'to curse.' Maledicere, in turn, was formed by combining the Latin words male, meaning 'badly,' and dicere, 'to speak' or 'to say.' (Merriam-Webster)

ormolu [awr-muh-loo]

adjective:
1 Any of several copper and zinc or tin alloys resembling gold in appearance and used to ornament furniture, moldings, architectural details, and jewelry
2 an imitation of gold.

(click to enlarge)

Clars had described the clocks in its auction catalog as 'a rare pair of Chinese ormolu bronze automaton clocks' manufactured in a workshop in the southern port city of Guangzhou. (Steven Lee Myers and Graham Bowley, They Look Like the Emperors' Clocks. But Are They Real?, The New York Times, December 2018)

No gilded ormolu appears, certainly, but pieces are not without decorative flourishes. (Antonia van der Meer, Hemingway’s Homey Cuban House, The Wall Street Journal, June 2016)

He claimed almost 100 items had been stolen, including a Persian rug worth £35,000, valuable antiques and clocks, and a 19th century red marble rococo fire surround, with ormolu inserts. (Nina Morgan, St Albans fraudster who staged burglary and committed £1m mortgage fraud jailed, Herts Advertiser, January 2019)

He was rather sorry he had come, till Lady Narborough, looking at the great ormolu gilt clock that sprawled in gaudy curves on the mauve-draped mantelshelf, exclaimed: "How horrid of Henry Wotton to be so late!" (Oscar Wilde, The Picture Of Dorian Gray)

Origin:
1765, 'an alloy of copper, zinc, and tin resembling gold,' from French or moulu, literally 'ground gold,' from or 'gold' (from Latin aurum, from PIE aus- 'gold;' see aureate) + moulu 'ground up,' past participle of moudre 'to grind,' from Latin molere 'to grind' (from PIE root mele- 'to crush, grind'). The sense of the word before it reached English began as 'gold leaf prepared for gilding bronze, brass, etc.,' then shifted to 'gilded bronze,' then to various prepared metallic substances resembling it. (Online Etymology Dictionary)