sociopath
Americannoun
-
sociopaths
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
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Nouns
Etymology
Origin of sociopath
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How does sociopath compare to similar and commonly confused words? Explore the most common comparisons:
Explanation
A sociopath is a person with a mental illness that manifests in extremely antisocial behavior and the inability to distinguish right from wrong. You're probably right to be afraid of a sociopath. Pathology means illness, and so socio- pathology means social illness. If someone is a sociopath, that means that they have a social sickness––they lack the ability to be social. Many movies and TV crime shows feature plots involving sociopaths, but hopefully the TV is the only place you ever encounter sociopaths.
Vocabulary lists containing sociopath
Common Senses: Path ("Feeling")
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Frankenwords: Words with Roots from Different Languages
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We the People: Soc
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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:
He takes no sensual pleasure in his destruction of Othello and Cassio, just the studied satisfaction of a sociopath watching with appreciation, as if from a distance, the malignant results of his handiwork.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 9, 2026
"All but one of the characters is a sociopath, so the movie works on almost no levels. I love to put it on and yell at it."
From BBC ● Aug. 9, 2025
“Even in the department they work in, you have to keep an eye over your shoulder. A sociopath does pretty well in this environment, but you don’t want too many sociopaths in the same department.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 12, 2025
It is, unfortunately, the heyday of the harmful sociopath and the abusive clinical narcissist.
From Salon ● Feb. 12, 2025
The kind that makes me wonder if my brother is a sociopath.
From "We Are the Ants" by Shaun David Hutchinson
Rhys: There’s a couple of ways — a light dabble of narcissists, sociopaths, “The Psychopath Test” by Jon Ronson.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 13, 2025
One of the theater’s more prominent sociopaths gets a makeover in “Hedda,” director Nia DaCosta’s reimagining of “Hedda Gabler,” with an approach that opens up the play—and an interpretive can of worms.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 28, 2025
Psychologists, too, make this mistake, believing that sociopaths are not strategic but, rather, mentally ill, because they were traumatized in childhood.
From Slate ● Oct. 29, 2024
It's just his special flourish to imagine the secret leaders are cat-loving, child-hating sociopaths.
From Salon ● Aug. 13, 2024
But, except for Harry, all of us, including my father, had been called sociopaths at some time in our lives.
From "Confessions of a Murder Suspect" by James Patterson
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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.
