bad actor

noun

plural bad actors

: a person, group, country, etc. who purposely and usually repeatedly engages in very bad behavior (such as committing crimes or causing harm to others)

Giving users a way to prove that they're being harassed with, say, a screenshot or some other form of authentication could help Twitter catch bad actors, even after they've covered their tracks.

—Issie Lapowsky

A perennial diplomatic bad actor, North Korea has already rattled its sabers at the opening of the Obama administration.

—Alex Kingsbury

"We've got to break away from the notion," as the U.A.W.'s [United Auto Workers] director of public relations, Peter G. Laarman, puts it, "that labor is a 'bad actor' in the economy. …"

—Harry Stein

also : something that causes trouble, danger, or a problem

The bad actor in male pattern hair loss is DHT, a metabolic product of testosterone.

—Jane E. Brody

We have special ducts throughout the vapor bath that carry away all the toxic bad actors.

—PC Today

Examples of bad actor in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The appalling actions taken by the few bad actors who made the news for all the wrong reasons in the past few years should not reflect on the rest of us. —Dp Opinion, The Denver Post, 30 May 2024

The nature of social media — fast-moving and sometimes driven by unreliable narrators or bad actors — means that large audiences are more vulnerable to misinformation. —Nick Corasaniti, New York Times, 28 May 2024

Instead, a bad actor can simply order voters’ ballots. —Nicolee Ambrose, Baltimore Sun, 8 Apr. 2024

Political campaigns and bad actors also have weaponized highly realistic images, videos and audio content to scam, mislead and disenfranchise voters. —Ali Swenson, Fortune, 22 May 2024

Creditors don't verify the age of applicants, so a bad actor could potentially open a credit card without anyone noticing until the kid becomes an adult and wants a card of their own. —Andrew Limbong, NPR, 20 May 2024

Congress must keep up the oversight effort and hold bad actors accountable. —The Editors, National Review, 17 May 2024

Federal officials have also warned that bad actors from within the U.S. are behind some of the attacks. —Minnah Arshad, USA TODAY, 15 May 2024

In the letter, Nissan North America said a bad actor attacked a company virtual private network and demanded payment. —Khristopher J. Brooks, CBS News, 15 May 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1879, in the meaning defined above