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

Regehr says parents should also talk with their kids about algorithms and the potential for misuse by bad actors on social media, citing concerns over online safety. —Rachel Hale, USA Today, 23 May 2026

But when the government fails to hold providers accountable, bad actors find loopholes. —Al Sharpton, New York Daily News, 22 May 2026

Allowing bad actors to continue to do business while limiting their competition forces consumers, as well as Medicare, to continue to use the very low-quality firms Oz claims to be battling. —Howard Gleckman, Forbes.com, 18 May 2026

Selig declined an interview request, but his office told 60 Minutes the commission is hiring more staff and using artificial intelligence to go after bad actors. —Jon Wertheim, CBS News, 17 May 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