villain - Wiktionary, the free dictionary (original) (raw)

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

a stereotypical villain (1 & 3)

Examples (fiction)
Darth Vader in Star Wars Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter Iago in Othello Count Dracula in Dracula Sauron in The Lord of the Rings / The Hobbit Snidely Whiplash from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show Dan Backslide in The Dover Boys, a cartoon parody of the type from 1942

Probably from Middle English vilein, from Old French vilein (modern French vilain), in turn from Late Latin vīllānus, meaning serf or peasant, someone who is bound to the soil of a Latin vīlla, which is to say, worked on the equivalent of a plantation in late Antiquity, in Italy or Gaul. Doublet of villein.

Compare typologically pagan (see more).

villain (plural villains)

  1. (Can we clean up(+) this sense?) A vile, wicked person.
    1. An extremely depraved person, or one capable or guilty of great crimes.
    2. A deliberate scoundrel.
  2. (archaic, derogatory) A low-born, abject person.
    • c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire; London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act III, scene iii:
      Note the preſumption of this Scythian ſlaue:
      I tel thee villaine, thoſe that lead my horſe
      Haue to their names tytles of dignitie,
      And dar’ſt thou bluntly cal me Baiazeth?
  3. (fiction) A character who has the role of being bad, especially antagonizing the hero; an antagonist who is also evil or malevolent.
    Synonyms: antagonist; see also Thesaurus:villain
    • 1904–1905, Baroness Orczy [_i.e._, Emma Orczy], “The Affair at the Novelty Theatre”, in The Case of Miss Elliott, London: T[homas] Fisher Unwin, published 1905, →OCLC; republished as popular edition, London: Greening & Co., 1909, OCLC 11192831, quoted in The Case of Miss Elliott (ebook no. 2000141h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg of Australia, February 2020:
      Miss Phyllis Morgan, as the hapless heroine dressed in the shabbiest of clothes, appears in the midst of a gay and giddy throng; she apostrophises all and sundry there, including the villain, and has a magnificent scene which always brings down the house, and nightly adds to her histrionic laurels.
    • 2012 July 18, Scott Tobias, “The Dark Knight Rises”, in AV Club‎[1], archived from the original on 30 August 2012:
      As The Dark Knight Rises brings a close to Christopher Nolan’s staggeringly ambitious Batman trilogy, it’s worth remembering that director chose The Scarecrow as his first villain—not necessarily the most popular among the comic’s gallery of rogues, but the one who set the tone for entire series. […] But in the underground tunnel system, a powerful new villain emerges in Bane (Tom Hardy), a bulked-out mercenary in a gas mask who may look and speak like a professional wrestler, but who carries out a thoroughly considered plan to isolate Gotham and impose his own sadistic vision of government upon it.
    • 2025 June 2, Adrian Horton, “Tech-bro satire Mountainhead is an insufferable disappointment”, in The Guardian‎[2], →ISSN, archived from the original on 12 June 2025:
      In some ways, it’s a relief to see tech bros, especially AI entrepreneurs, reach full, unambiguous movie-villain status.
  4. (poker) Any opponent player, especially a hypothetical player for example and didactic purposes. Compare: hero (“the current player”).
    Let's discuss how to play if you are the chip leader (that is, if you have more chips than all the villains).
  5. Archaic form of villein (“feudal tenant, peasant, serf”).

scoundrel

bad person in a stage or screen play

a peasant free of serfdom

Translations to be checked

villain (third-person singular simple present villains, present participle villaining, simple past and past participle villained)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To debase; to degrade [16th century].

  2. ^ Hall, Joseph Sargent (2 March 1942), “2. The Vowel Sounds of Unstressed and Partially Stressed Syllables”, in The Phonetics of Great Smoky Mountain Speech (American Speech: Reprints and Monographs; 4), New York: King's Crown Press, →DOI, →ISBN, § II.2, page 65.

villain

  1. (dated) genitive plural of villa

villain oblique singular, m (oblique plural villainz, nominative singular villainz, nominative plural **villain)

  1. alternative form of vilain