Word.ws English Dictionary

bad boy

bad boy noun: a man whose rebellious nature makes him dangerous or attractive.

Noun

bad boy (plural bad boys)

  1. A man whose rebellious nature makes him dangerous or attractive.
    • Yeah, I fit the profile all right. Perfect made-to-order malcontent. Let's sign this bad boy up and sic him on somebody fast, before the foam dries on his mouth.2012, Douglas MacKinnon, Vengeance Is Mine, →ISBN
    • Among the 'students' receiving below average marks was 22-year-old Vsevolod Raube from Bobruisk, who was considered the 'bad boy of the party'.2012, N. Arielli, B. Collins, Transnational Soldiers: Foreign Military Enlistment in the Modern Era, →ISBN
  2. (slang) A male criminal.
  3. (figuratively, slang) An undesirable or difficult task.
    • Let's get this bad boy done!
  4. (slang) A powerful or impressive product or item.
    • Many school music teachers and directors are not primarily clarinetists and, knowing little of the subtle intricacies of this "bad boy" of instruments, can teach little more than the fingering.1949 November-December, Floyd E. Low, “Keep that pitch UP!”, in The Instrumentalist, volume 4, Association for the Advancement of Instrumental Music, page 38
    • […] he groaned as he twisted his arm over his head to follow the groove to the right wheel well, "if this bad boy connects right there, then it can't be a light."1988, Writers Forum, numbers 14-17, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs
    Synonyms:
    bad baby
  5. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see bad, boy.

Examples of bad boy in a sentence

  • Like so many dark and delicious bad boys, there's more to Damien than meets the eye.2012, Kendra Leigh Castle, Shadow Rising, →ISBN:
  • Born in the small town of Rockwood, east Tennessee, Carter’s bubblegum sound and mini-bad boy image made him the definitive millennium child star.2022 November 6, Emma Garland, “Aaron Carter was the millennium’s bubblegum bad boy – and the victim of a rapacious music industry”, in The...
  • So isn't it time you took this bad boy for a test drive?1992 November 16, “The POWERstation 220: Here today. More tomorrow. [Advertisement]”, in InfoWorld, volume 14, number 46, page 137:
  • “Oh yeah,I remember, you already bagged one of those bad boys backin the city.”Sal chuckled.2014, David Vengley, Mars Base Red Seven, →ISBN:

Synonyms of bad boy

Forms of bad boy

pluralbad boys
alternative formbad-boy
alternative formbadboy

Words formed from bad boy

Questions about bad boy

What does bad boy mean?
Bad boy means a man whose rebellious nature makes him dangerous or attractive.
How do you use bad boy in a sentence?
Like so many dark and delicious bad boys, there's more to Damien than meets the eye.
What part of speech is bad boy?
Bad boy is a noun.
What is the plural of bad boy?
The plural of bad boy is bad boys.

Words near bad boy in the dictionary

  1. bad bitches
  2. bad blood
  3. bad boi
  4. bad bois
  5. bad books
  6. bad boy
  7. bad boy clause
  8. bad boys
  9. bad breath
  10. bad breaths
  11. bad business

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: bad boy (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-bad boy.ogg.

Cite this entry: “bad boy.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bad_boy. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.