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

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Etymology

Origin of psychopath

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

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Compare meaning

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

• sociopath vs. psychopath

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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

For a book that claims to praise Diana, Mr. Spencer makes her sound like a borderline psychopath.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 9, 2026

Anderson was recently evaluated by Kerry Daynes, a consultant and forensic psychologist, who concluded he was not a psychopath.

From BBC ● Oct. 3, 2026

Those are traits that help define a psychopath, someone who lives among us but doesn’t have the empathy and ethics necessary to behave in a civilized, or even safe, fashion.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 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

But I can’t see him as a psychopath.

From "The Girl on the Train" by Paula Hawkins

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

That seems to tie into your reference to psychopaths, as well as extreme narcissists.

From Salon ● Mar. 1, 2025

A lot of the stories I was reading were about narcissistic men and psychopaths, and how they operate.

From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 23, 2024

People exhibiting this purest form of the disorder would become known, in the jargon of psychiatry, as “Cleckley” psychopaths.

From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson

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Related Words

• lunatic
• maniac
• psycho
• sociopath

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