psychopath

American  

[sahy-kuh-path] / ˈsaɪ kəˌpæθ /

noun

• psychopaths
  plural

1. a person with a psychopathic personality, which manifests as amoral and antisocial behavior, lack of ability to love or establish meaningful personal relationships, extreme egocentricity, failure to learn from experience, etc.

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psychopath British  

/ ˈsaɪkəʊˌpæθ /

noun

1. Also called: sociopath. a person afflicted with a personality disorder characterized by a tendency to commit antisocial and sometimes violent acts and a failure to feel guilt for such acts

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psychopath Cultural  

1. A mentally unbalanced person who is inclined toward antisocial and criminal behavior. (Compare sociopath.)

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Other Word Forms

Derived Forms

• psychopathic
  adjective
• psychopathically
  adverb

Inflected Forms

Nouns

• psychopaths
  plural

Etymology

Origin of psychopath

First recorded in 1880–85; psycho- + -path

Compare meaning

How does psychopath compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:

• sociopath vs. psychopath

Explanation

It would be unfortunate to end up alone in an elevator with a psychopath. A psychopath is a mentally ill person with violent tendencies. Psychopath is a psychiatric term that refers to a person suffering from a mental illness involving violent behavior or various kinds of abnormal social interactions. A person who's been diagnosed as a psychopath has a lot of trouble interacting with other people and living a normal life. The noun psychopath is also used casually to mean simply a bizarre or unpredictably violent person. The word comes from the Greek words for "mind" and "suffering": psykhe and pathos.

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

psychopath psychopaths

I'm "90% that nice, warm guy who's on the news, but I'm also 10% psychopath," Rajan had said earlier.

From BBC ● Oct. 1, 2026

Dressed in a shabby old coat and chic beret—“a look halfway between woman of mystery and lobster fisher”—Nora aims to thwart a dangerous psychopath while protecting the policeman with whom she’s increasingly smitten.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 5, 2026

But Bardem’s Max is a different breed of psychopath from those previously embodied by Roberts DeNiro and Mitchum.

From Salon ● Jul. 17, 2026

A hyperactive psychopath, Skarsgård’s Little John is one of the movie’s rare treats.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 18, 2026

He said it so seriously that she blinked, wondering if maybe she had accidentally struck up a conversation with a psychopath who had a thing for baking.

From "Far from the Tree" by Robin Benway

Which brings me back to psychopaths, who simply can’t see that their actions cause harm or just don’t care.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2026

Earlier research had suggested that the striatum may be unusually active in psychopaths, but it was less clear whether the size of this brain region was also involved.

From Science Daily ● May 10, 2026

Historically, we have pathologized people who lack such impulses; they are known as psychopaths, and their qualities have been deemed incompatible with a functioning society.

From Slate ● Jan. 9, 2026

And contrary to common belief, very few killers are in fact psychopaths, especially domestic homicide perpetrators like the Menendez brothers.

From BBC ● Nov. 30, 2024

When Ms. Rosario was working, which was almost all the time, Mosley stopped by to make sure Michael hadn’t been kidnapped by psychopaths or brainwashed by daytime television.

From "The First State of Being" by Erin Entrada Kelly

Related Words

• lunatic
• maniac
• psycho
• sociopath