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

Health system data breaches expose personal, financial and medical records of patients and may leave them vulnerable to identity theft and fraud at the hands of bad actors. —Lauren Giella, MSNBC Newsweek, 29 Oct. 2025

The former leaves us vulnerable to bad actors who weaponize realistic clips. —Nadav Ziv, Time, 23 Oct. 2025

That could have drastic consequences as bad actors use it to enact hateful stereotypes and push extremist propaganda. —Miles Klee, Rolling Stone, 23 Oct. 2025

Instead of imposing a moratorium on all operators, the city should use existing code enforcement tools to target bad actors. —The Editorial Board, Oc Register, 22 Oct. 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