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

Tech giants have told us all about how AI will take control away from society, steal our jobs, allow bad actors to design dangerous pathogens or cause a catastrophic cyberattack or destroy our financial systems. — Staff, FOXNews.com, 23 Oct. 2026

For example, companies that leave certain software unpatched – even for a few days – are exposing themselves to vulnerabilities that are no longer too difficult or expensive for bad actors to exploit. — David Goldman, CNN Money, 23 Oct. 2026

The other flaw means user data is stored on the system instead of being removed which allows a bad actor to potentially access it, including downloading or wiping it, Sullivan said. — ABC News, 21 Oct. 2026

As organizations automate more workflows, bad actors could use the same tactics to deceive an agent. — Shekhar Iyer, Forbes.com, 20 Oct. 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