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

The same bad actors are using the same playbook as before, but the tools to address it have disappeared. —Makena Kelly, WIRED, 31 Oct. 2024

These factors make the supply chain a primary target for bad actors. —Shai Gabay, Forbes, 30 Oct. 2024

The trust that has been lost or destroyed, either intentionally by bad actors or intentionally by poor communication, needs to be rebuilt. —Erik Klemetti, Discover Magazine, 15 Oct. 2024

Congress should pass legislation that ensures bad actors and non-participatory nations are not rewarded through future trade agreements. —The Denver Post, 11 Oct. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1879, in the meaning defined above