bad egg
UK/ˈbæd ɛɡ/
bad egg noun: someone whose behaviour is reprehensible or irresponsible; a rogue.
Noun
bad egg (plural bad eggs)
- Someone whose behaviour is reprehensible or irresponsible; a rogue.
- "Dat's right!" piped up the newsboy who had brought the policeman. "I see him do de trick jest a minit ago!"
"This is a plot against me!" fumed the swindler.
"Dat feller is a bad egg!" went on the newsboy. "His name is Bill Butts. He's a slick one, he is. Hits de country jays strong, he does!"1906, Horatio Alger, Joe the Hotel Boy - I've been a fairly bad egg, Byrne, for a great many years; but, by George! I'm not entirely rotten yet.1914 October – 1916 July, Edgar Rice Burroughs, chapter X, in The Mucker, Chicago, Ill.: A[lexander] C[aldwell] McClurg & Co., published 31 October 1921, →OCLC
- "Dat's right!" piped up the newsboy who had brought the policeman. "I see him do de trick jest a minit ago!"
- An egg that has gone bad; a rotten egg.
bad egg meaning in Tamil
bad egg in Tamil
- பொல்லாங்குக்காரன்
Examples of bad egg in a sentence
- My son had a drug problem and hired a bad egg as a chief accountant […]1990, John Updike, Rabbit at Rest:
- "And the fifth immortal we know tried to kill you." "He is a bad egg.2017 May 26, Dan Shive, El Goonish Shive (webcomic), Comic for Friday, May 26, 2017:
Antonyms of bad egg
Forms of bad egg
| plural | bad eggs |
|---|
Origin of bad egg
An allusion to an egg that has gone bad or turned rotten.
Questions about bad egg
- What does bad egg mean?
- Bad egg means someone whose behaviour is reprehensible or irresponsible; a rogue.
- What is bad egg in Tamil?
- Bad egg in Tamil is பொல்லாங்குக்காரன். See Bad egg meaning in Tamil.
- How do you use bad egg in a sentence?
- My son had a drug problem and hired a bad egg as a chief accountant […]
- What part of speech is bad egg?
- Bad egg is a noun.
- How do you pronounce bad egg?
- Bad egg is pronounced /ˈbæd ɛɡ/ (UK).
- What is the plural of bad egg?
- The plural of bad egg is bad eggs.
Words near bad egg in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bad egg (page history and authors); bad egg (Tamil Wiktionary) (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 egg.ogg.
Cite this entry: “bad egg.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bad_egg. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.