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

But bot facilitators are far from the only type of bad actors JD Canada deals with on a monthly basis. —Meghan Hall, Sourcing Journal, 5 Dec. 2024

Blaming responsible retailers for the actions of bad actors only punishes hard-working Texans. —Jay R. Jordan, Axios, 5 Dec. 2024

There's no need to stress about your Social Security or Instagram login getting stolen—Windows 11 Pro is armed with security features to keep bad actors and cybercrime at bay. —New Atlas, 3 Dec. 2024

Palo Alto Networks Bigger deals: Cybersecurity is a secular growth market: As the number of bad actors grows, companies can’t afford to not invest in defense. —Paulina Likos, CNBC, 29 Nov. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1879, in the meaning defined above