villain
Americannoun
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villains
plural
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a cruelly malicious person who is involved in or devoted to wickedness or crime; scoundrel.
- Synonyms:
- scamp, rogue, rapscallion, rascal, knave
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a character in a play, novel, or the like, who constitutes an important evil agency in the plot.
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a person or thing considered to be the cause of something bad.
Fear is the villain that can sabotage our goals.
noun
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a wicked or malevolent person
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(in a novel, play, film, etc) the main evil character and antagonist to the hero
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humorous a mischievous person; rogue
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slang:police a criminal
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history a variant spelling of villein
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obsolete an uncouth person; boor
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of villain
First recorded in 1275–1325; Middle English vilein, vilain “churlish rustic, serf,” from Middle French, from Vulgar Latin and Medieval Latin villānus “a farm servant, farmhand”; see origin at villa, -an
Explanation
A villain is a bad person — real or made up. In books, movies, current events, or history, the villain is the character who does mean, evil things on purpose. Today a villain is a wicked person, whether in fact or fiction. In the 1300s, villain described a low-born rustic. It came from the Medieval Latin word villanus, or farmhand. Just why a word would evolve from meaning farmer into evildoer is a little mysterious, although it probably has to do with farmers not being chivalrous, like the knights who were so admired in those days.
Vocabulary lists containing villain
"Black Panther" Lingo
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Superhero Lexicon
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"Romeo and Juliet" by William Shakespeare, Act III
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Alison Thornton, who plays chief bully Chris Hargensen, says social media "is kind of a villain in the show".
From BBC ● Oct. 7, 2026
“She was a sort of villain who you related to and rooted for,” said writer Rachel Lipman, who joined the show as the first season was coming together.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 7, 2026
It is easy in retrospect to turn Edison into a rent-seeking villain protecting his investment in DC.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 23, 2026
Given all the suffering I’d seen, I had expected my medbed search to end with a villain.
From Slate ● Sep. 22, 2026
If you’ve ever seen that movie, you know that toward the end the hyenas turn against the villain, Scar, and attack him.
From "Red Kayak" by Priscilla Cummings
It’s shaping up to be a dark autumn for Silicon Valley’s villains.
From Salon ● Oct. 16, 2026
He has played gangsters, soldiers, policemen, politicians, patriots, villains, comic characters and tragic figures, while moving between Hindi and Marathi cinema and sometimes also working behind the camera as a director and writer.
From BBC ● Oct. 8, 2026
Different characters — villains and helpers — pop up along his journey, as well as different tools and weapons.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 18, 2026
Tech CEOs, mimicking the villains of sci-fi, are telling the public that resistance is futile.
From Salon ● Aug. 14, 2026
Even by the standards of Wall Street villains whose character flaws wind up being exaggerated to fit the crime, Cassano, in the retelling, became a cartoon monster.
From "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis
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Get a wordDefinitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
