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

He also denied telling her in 2024 that he had been diagnosed as a psychopath.

From BBC ● Aug. 11, 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

Not everyone with psychopathic traits commits crimes, and not every person who commits a crime is a psychopath, but research has consistently linked psychopathy with a higher risk of violent behavior.

From Science Daily ● May 10, 2026

You’d be unwise to look to the movies for economic insight—this one amounts to an extended fatuous argument that an individual who behaved like a corporate restructuring would be a psychopath.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 24, 2025

But I can’t see him as a psychopath.

From "The Girl on the Train" by Paula Hawkins

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

"There's a subset of people, like 1% of the population, who are psychopaths, who are not worried about the vulnerable, who are worried first and foremost about cementing power and gaining status."

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

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

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

Related Words

• lunatic
• maniac
• psycho
• sociopath