The Spanish word 'malandra' meaning 'rogue' or 'scoundrel' has an interesting etymology that traces back to the Latin word 'malandria', which referred to a type of leprosy. The word evolved through Italian, where it became 'malandrino' and dialectal 'malandro', both meaning 'thief' or 'vagabond', before entering Spanish as 'malandra'. This semantic shift from a disease to a person of questionable character likely developed because both were viewed as unwanted elements in society - the disease being physically undesirable and the thief being socially undesirable.

While 'malandra' itself is not extremely common in modern Spanish, it shares its negative connotations with more frequently used Spanish words starting with 'mal-' (meaning 'bad' or 'evil'), such as 'malo' (bad), 'malvado' (wicked), and 'maldad' (evil). Though these words have a different etymological root, they reinforce the negative meaning of 'malandra'.

While there isn't a direct English cognate of 'malandra', the English medical term 'malandriform' (resembling malandria or leprosy) preserves the original Latin meaning. The English word 'malady', though from a different Latin root ('male habitus'), shows a similar pattern of using the 'mal-' prefix to indicate something negative or harmful.