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

This disconnected structure leads to critical measures consequently getting lost in the handoff, creating gaps for bad actors to break in. —Chaim Mazal, Forbes, 22 Nov. 2024

Equating Israel's legitimate acts of self-defense with the atrocities of a terrorist organization like Hamas represents a dangerous moral and legal inversion, undermining the principles of international law and emboldening bad actors who exploit these flawed rulings for propaganda purposes. —Matt Robison, Newsweek, 21 Nov. 2024

Since billionaire Elon Musk bought the platform formerly known as Twitter in 2022, the safeguards that were in place to protect users from misinformation deteriorated or were removed, empowering bad actors to spread falsehoods and conspiracies. —Loreben Tuquero, Austin American-Statesman, 15 Nov. 2024

Voting machines have physical access controls and cybersecurity protections to keep bad actors away, and they're regularly tested for accuracy. —Sam Sabin, Axios, 5 Nov. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1879, in the meaning defined above