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

Furthermore, a recent Financial Times investigation revealed that even when AI developers implement guardrails to prevent bad actors from misusing them, protections can be bypassed using openly available software tools in less than 10 minutes. —Mohammad Hosseini, Chicago Tribune, 4 June 2026

Callaghan notes that there have been bad actors around the corner-crossing issue, on both sides of the fence and all sides of the corner post. —Andrew McKean, Outdoor Life, 4 June 2026

Inconsistent enforcement might prevent us from stopping entities like the oil and gas lobby, counterfeiters, hate groups, or other bad actors from using the Patagonia name and logo. —Simmone Shah, Time, 2 June 2026

The launch prompted a wave of concern over cybersecurity threats from bad actors. —Sawdah Bhaimiya, CNBC, 1 June 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