malus

noun

1. The loss or return of performance-related compensation originally paid by an employer to an employee as a result of the discovery of a defect in the performance.

   “When bank fired the loan originator, they recovered the last two years of her bonuses under the malus clause in her contract.”

   “The existence of boni and mali for the different risks can be interpreted through the sign of estimated covariances.”

   “If the boni and mali do not depend on the frequency of claims, the average bonus-malus coefficient increases with the frequency.”

   “Bidders with inferior quality, higher transport costs or additional switching costs receive a Malus which decreases their bid automatically to incorporate the disadvantages. Bonus Malus Auctions are used by about 50% of all companies.”

   “Akramkhanov et al. (2010) also suggested a system of boni and mali on taxes to support the implementation of measures to achieve both water saving and salinity control (Table 3.3.1).”

2. (rare)A penalty or negative thing.

   “The driver game has a game screen with less number of properties and representations (see Fig. 3(a)). […] If the user completes a level within the allocated time, then the user gets a bonus and will be advanced to another level[,] and if user is unable to complete a level, then a malus is provided and the user gets retained in the same level.”

3. A plant of the genus Malus (the apples).

   “It leads to a certain extent to an evergreen type Docynia which is distributed in the Himalayas and western China and whose magnificence of bloom I learned to know on my travels in Yunnan; it is distinct from genuine maluses.”

   “Malus ‘Dartmouth’ is a variety of M. pumila, the wild crab-apple, and is only one of the several maluses which offer a wider choice than the commonly planted ‘John Downie,’ lemoinei and eleyi.”

   “In gardens which are rather open and exposed, the ornamental crabs or maluses are generally less satisfactory than the cherries as flowering trees.”

4. (form-of, plural)plural of malu