bad actor
9
6.5
- noun
- /bæd ˈæktər/
:
mala persona
- The company had to fire several bad actors who were causing disruption in the workplace.
- few bad actors
- really bad actors
- very bad actors
They become bad actors and nobody wants to work with them.
- They become bad actors and nobody wants to work with them.
- Maybe Putin's, maybe Putin's the not the bad actor here, right?
- Like, how do we discern the good from the bad actors?
- And it is a far larger, more nefarious system of bad actors.
- But in that moment, you see certain very, very bad actors advancing because they feel they've got an advantage.
- So you have to create structures to manage when there are bad actors, when you're in a company, you can just fire those people.
- OK, might be nice to have a cop on that block make the presence known to deter any bad actors and behaviour.
- I think that the reason sexual consent has now become such a hot topic is, yes, there's bad actors doing bad things, of course, men and women.
- The consequences of the drug war, incarceration, injustice, a deadly black market that funds bad actors are more pressing than ever.
- Aesop may have been talking about greed in his original tale, but there is a certain greed in keeping a bad actor around just for profit.
- So it's designed theoretically to protect against bad actors and to make sure that we can function as a stable society.
- She's she, I think at her root, wants to do the right thing, but she's working with bad actors.
Examples
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So it's designed theoretically to protect against bad actors and to make sure that we can function as a stable society.
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You have a lot of bad actors involved in this mess.
Blog text (22) -
Use existing law to punish bad actors and have the will to use it.
Blog text (30) -
Let's keep the focus on the bad actors who created and continue to drain the students of every penny they can get.
Blog text (5) -
So you have to create structures to manage when there are bad actors, when you're in a company, you can just fire those people.
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There are bad actors and messed-up people out there, everywhere.
Blog text (13) -
Well, when it comes to helping people better discern fact from fiction and bad actors from good actors.
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Indisputably, indisputably bad actors are to be found everywhere.
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There's always bad actors that will infiltrate large crowds.
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He's a bad actor.
Synonyms
104
1.6
A person who harms others on purpose or does wrong things
1
8.3
A person who causes trouble on purpose or acts dishonestly
How Harmful
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is partially derivable: 'bad' (harmful) + 'actor' (one who acts) would lead a B1 learner to infer 'someone/something that does harm' or 'someone who behaves badly.' However, the specific cybersecurity sense (a malicious non-human agent, e.g. malware or a bot) is a technical extension and the non-human/technical nuance is not fully predictable from the constituents alone, making it only partially transparent.
Etymology
Bad actor comes from the picture of a stage where a bad actor acts poorly or breaks the rules and ruins the show, so the phrase now means 'a person who causes trouble, behaves badly, or fails at their role'.