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

That lack of federal action could be leaving the door open for more bad actors to take advantage of the political moment to target immigrants, some lawmakers warn. —Allison Gordon, CNN Money, 2 Oct. 2025

Sprague was quick to point out that those bad actors were the extremely small minority, even if there’s still no place for it. —Brody Miller, New York Times, 2 Oct. 2025

Those claims already stretched the limits of seriousness and legality, targeting splinter groups – at best – and other bad actors completely unassociated with Al Qaeda at worst. —Alexander Langlois, Oc Register, 30 Sep. 2025

There are constantly bad actors out there looking for opportunities to victimize others, Robinson said. —Arkansas Online, 26 Sep. 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