Word.ws English Dictionary

badmash

UK/bʌdˈmɑːʃ/

badmash noun: a rogue, ruffian or miscreant.

Noun

badmash (plural badmashes)

  1. (British, India, Pakistan, South-Asia, British Pakistani) A rogue, ruffian or miscreant.
    • ‘However big a badmash one is – if one's happy in consequence, that's some justification.’1924, EM Forster, A Passage to India, Penguin, published 2005, page 102
    • Once the five had left for the village, the Dutchman had immediately begun working on the badmash who had stood up to the havildar.2013, Garry Douglas Kilworth, Rogue Officer

Forms of badmash

pluralbadmashes
alternative formbadmaash
alternative formbudmash

Origin of badmash

Borrowed from Hindustani بدمعاش (badm'āś) / बदमाश (badmāś) and its source, Persian بدمعاش (badma'âš), from بد (bad, “bad, evil”) + معاش (ma'âš, “life, livelihood”), ultimately from Arabic عَاشَ (ʕāša, “to live”). Compare lowlife, which is a similar formation in English.

Words that rhyme with badmash

Questions about badmash

What does badmash mean?
Badmash means a rogue, ruffian or miscreant.
What part of speech is badmash?
Badmash is a noun.
How do you pronounce badmash?
Badmash is pronounced /bʌdˈmɑːʃ/ (UK).
What is the plural of badmash?
The plural of badmash is badmashes.

Words near badmash in the dictionary

  1. badly-off
  2. badmaash
  3. badmaashes
  4. badman
  5. Badmans
  6. badmash
  7. badmashes
  8. badmen
  9. badmin
  10. badmins
  11. badminton

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: badmash (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.

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