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

Some of these bad actors are using links that appear to be from a major airline with a link to rebook your travel. —Jennifer Earl, CBS News, 19 Dec. 2025

Turn off chat functions to limit their exposure to bad actors. —Sam Woodward, USA Today, 19 Dec. 2025

These identity theft schemes represent an ever-escalating confrontation between nation-state actors like North Korea and major Fortune 500 companies, as bad actors develop new deception techniques and businesses respond by bolstering their defenses. —John Kell, Fortune, 17 Dec. 2025

There are bad actors in every setting. —Lucy Feldman, Time, 17 Dec. 2025

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