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

Experts have worried that this dynamic could lead to a phenomenon referred to as the liar’s dividend, in which bad actors use the claim that authentic media is AI-generated in order to create distrust and avoid accountability. —Jared Perlo, NBC news, 1 Feb. 2026

Despite the best efforts of bad actors, though, watching hockey in the company of 20,000 of your closest friends can still feel unbeatable — and parts of the in-arena experience are unmatched. —Sean Gentille, New York Times, 31 Jan. 2026

If anything, cybersecurity solutions will become even more important in the age of AI as bad actors grow increasingly sophisticated. —Jeff Marks, CNBC, 29 Jan. 2026

Lastly, the rise of AI systems and applications are uniquely well positioned to crack down crypto illicit activities, as AI systems can also operate globally on a 24/7 basis to keep pace with bad actors seeking to leverage crypto for nefarious purposes. —Sean Stein Smith, Forbes.com, 29 Jan. 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