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 the concerns around how Mythos’ could be abused by bad actors were overblown, experts previously told CNN. —Sean Lyngaas, CNN Money, 7 Apr. 2026

In addition to inadvertently allowing bad actors access to the sensitive information, Nike also neglected to alert shoppers to the data breach in a timely manner, the suit said. —Kate Nishimura, Footwear News, 7 Apr. 2026

The surge is a direct consequence of generative AI becoming faster, cheaper, and more accessible to bad actors. —Catherina Gioino, Fortune, 3 Apr. 2026

Still, as bad actors get increasingly creative and learn how to evade the roadblocks thrown in their path, Spotify and other major streaming platforms have to continue combating the issue — and get more clever doing so. —Kyle Eustice, VIBE.com, 30 Mar. 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