badass
Syllables: bad·assUK/ˈbædæs//ˈbædˌæs/
badass noun: a belligerent or mean person; a person with an unpleasantly extreme appearance, attitudes, or behavior.
Noun
badass (plural badasses)
- A belligerent or mean person; a person with an unpleasantly extreme appearance, attitudes, or behavior.
- Don’t mess with that guy, he’s a real badass.
- A shake down officer, Sgt. Soaper, and Capt. Swarts, have been reading all my mail, including GCN (which is authorized to come in). Soaper has been sending the prison bad-asses to my cell to force me to have sex with them. Yesterday, Soaper opened my door and 2 prisoners came in and raped me. Capt....1984 August 4, Charlie Dill, “"Child Molester's Paper"”, in Gay Community News, page 4
- A person considered impressive due to courage, skill, daring, audacity, and/or toughness.
- "I'm a badass." (Jack Nicholson to a New York friend, early 1973.)1975, Norman Dickens, “Badass”, in Jack Nicholson: The Search for a Superstar, New York, N.Y.: New American Library, →OCLC, page 124
- The Oakland Raiders are one of the few teams that I have any feelings for besides the Steelers. Nowadays they're a bunch of wannabe badasses, but back in the day they were something to behold.1998, Jason Flores-Williams, chapter 6, in The Last Stand of Mr America, San Francisco, Calif.: Caught Inside Press, →OCLC; republished Seattle, Wash.: Nobody Rocks Press, 2009, →ISBN, page 124
Adjective
badass (comparative more badass, superlative most badass)
- Belligerent and troublesome.
- Uncle Jr. was really quiet. Probably because he was a junior high school teacher and was around badass, hollerin' kids all day.2005, Cupcake Brown, chapter 2, in A Piece of Cake: A Memoir, New York, N.Y.: Crown, →ISBN, page 21
- [There were] lots of really, really bad, badass people … I did not want to be a part of it.2009 April, Gary C. King, chapter 2, in Butcher, New York, N.Y.: Pinnacle Books, Kensington Publishing Corp., →ISBN, page 26
- Having an extreme appearance, attitude, or behavior that is considered admirable.
- That tough guy looks badass.
- "FAIRY WING GLITTER!!!" / *sparkle* / "It's hard to look bad-ass when using fairy powers..." *sigh*2004 February 18, Dan Shive, El Goonish Shive (webcomic), Comic for Wednesday, Feb 18, 2004
badass meaning in Bengali, Punjabi, Odia and Nepali
badass in Bengali
- বদমাস
badass in Punjabi
- ਬਦਮਾਸ਼
badass in Odia
- ବଦମାସ
badass in Nepali
- बदमाश, बदमास
More languagesFewer languages
- badass in Tagalog
- astig
- badass in Arabic
- مُشَاكِس mušākis
Examples of badass in a sentence
- There are badasses, and there are badasses.1995, Robert Girardi, Madeleine’s Ghost, New York, N.Y.: Delacorte Press, →ISBN:
- A survival tactic I learned on the psych ward was how to quickly size up potential enemies or garden-variety badasses.2012, Ilsa J. Bick, Drowning Instinct, Minneapolis, Minn.: Carolrhoda Lab, →ISBN:
- You're a badass but you ain't no criminal.2013, Susan Nussbaum, “Teddy Dobbs”, in Good Kings Bad Kings: A Novel, Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, →ISBN...
- [Charlize] Theron is an absolute badass in the role: hard, intense, quietly vulnerable, in charge at almost every moment.2017 December 1, Tom Breihan, “Mad Max: Fury Road Might Already be the Best Action Movie Ever Made”, in The A.V. Club, archived from the...
Synonyms of badass
Forms of badass
| Noun | |
|---|---|
| plural | badasses |
| alternative form | bad-ass |
| alternative form | bad ass |
| alternative form | bad-arse |
| alternative form | badarse |
| alternative form | bad arse |
| Adjective | |
| comparative | more badass |
| superlative | most badass |
Origin of badass
From bad + ass (“buttocks; one's self or person”).
Words formed from badass
Questions about badass
- What does badass mean?
- Badass means a belligerent or mean person; a person with an unpleasantly extreme appearance, attitudes, or behavior.
- What is badass in Bengali?
- Badass in Bengali is বদমাস. See Badass meaning in Bengali.
- How do you use badass in a sentence?
- There are badasses, and there are badasses.
- What part of speech is badass?
- Badass can be a noun or an adjective.
- How do you pronounce badass?
- Badass is pronounced /ˈbædæs/ (UK).
- What is the plural of badass?
- The plural of badass is badasses.
Words near badass in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: badass (page history and authors); badass (Bengali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); badass (Punjabi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); badass (Odia, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); badass (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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-us-badass.flac, en-au-badass.ogg.
Cite this entry: “badass.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/badass. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.