bad actor

noun

plural bad actors

: a person, group, country, etc. who purposely and usually repeatedly engages in very bad behavior (such as committing crimes or causing harm to others)

Giving users a way to prove that they're being harassed with, say, a screenshot or some other form of authentication could help Twitter catch bad actors, even after they've covered their tracks.

—Issie Lapowsky

A perennial diplomatic bad actor, North Korea has already rattled its sabers at the opening of the Obama administration.

—Alex Kingsbury

"We've got to break away from the notion," as the U.A.W.'s [United Auto Workers] director of public relations, Peter G. Laarman, puts it, "that labor is a 'bad actor' in the economy. …"

—Harry Stein

also : something that causes trouble, danger, or a problem

The bad actor in male pattern hair loss is DHT, a metabolic product of testosterone.

—Jane E. Brody

We have special ducts throughout the vapor bath that carry away all the toxic bad actors.

—PC Today

Examples of bad actor in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

With the vastly higher rate of vulnerability identification, Google is worried bad actors will also be able to identify software flaws faster. — Ryan Whitwam, ArsTechnica, 30 July 2026

Much of the conversation around AI security has focused on how bad actors are using AI to launch more sophisticated attacks. — Syed Ali, Forbes.com, 29 July 2026

Such information often seems focused on sensational subjects – including bad actors and bad actions. — Scott Jenkins, Christian Science Monitor, 28 July 2026

Trust and safety systems should stop bad actors without creating unnecessary friction for honest users. — Larry Magid, Mercury News, 23 July 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1879, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for bad actor

• attractor
• cofactor
• compactor
• contactor
• contractor
• distractor
• extractor
• impactor
• protractor
• reactor
• redactor
• refractor