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

In response, these bad actors are devoting considerable resources to automating brute force and phishing attacks against any account still protected by a password. —Zak Doffman, Forbes.com, 4 May 2025

China, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela are among the states typically named as such bad actors, particular when striking out against dissidents who have fled abroad. —Matthew Wills, JSTOR Daily, 1 May 2025

That means bad actors in the crypto space can essentially pay them off with the expectation of favors in return — all while the Trump administration continues to deregulate the crypto sector. —Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, 16 Apr. 2025

These recent measures address rogue law firms and fulfill his commitment to holding bad actors accountable. —Gabe Whisnant, MSNBC Newsweek, 15 Apr. 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