villain
Americannoun
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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.
-
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:
No one exemplifies this generous worldview better than Lotta, who turns out not to be the villain of May’s darkest imaginings but a complicated, compassionate and rather philosophical human being.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 28, 2026
OpenAI’s revelation this past week that its AI models escaped confinement and hacked another tech company’s systems gave new credibility to fears that this technology can, in fact, go sci-fi villain mode.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 25, 2026
I'm glad the message of this story is that, even though I'm the villain, everyone's sticking up for the national park.
From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2026
In a 2024 exposé on Bowlero’s rise, Amos Barshad introduced a now-familiar category of villain — the private-equity vulture — as more than the average mercenary buying up distressed properties and selling off their parts.
From Salon ● Jul. 3, 2026
“What are you, a villain or a hero?”
From "The Thing About Jellyfish" by Ali Benjamin
There are no villains here, just a group of super-fit college grads.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 29, 2026
Some imagine the ICC to be a judicial superhero, dispensing justice to arch villains around the world.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 23, 2026
DC Studios rebooted its cinematic universe with last year's well-received Superman, which followed a string of underperforming movies based on the comic company's collection of heroes and villains.
From BBC ● Jun. 26, 2026
After all, the “Toy Story” franchise has had pure villains before — one of them almost got away with incinerating the toys for good!
From Salon ● Jun. 21, 2026
We’re going to be vanquishing villains left and right.
From "Flora & Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures" by Kate DiCamillo
Definitions 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.
