Word.ws English Dictionary

big bad

/ˌbɪɡ ˈbæd/

big bad noun: a major adversary or antagonist of a piece of fiction.

Noun

big bad (plural big bads)

  1. A major adversary or antagonist of a piece of fiction.
    • Charlie, now menacingly equipped with a bionic arm, is these days in the service of new pantomime big bad, Poppy Adams, played with lysergic glee by Julianne Moore.2017 September 19, Gwilym Mumford, “Kingsman: The Golden Circle review – spy sequel reaches new heights of skyscraping silliness”, in the Guardian

Forms of big bad

pluralbig bads

Origin of big bad

The noun was back-formed in 1998 in the episode “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered”, season two of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It is a nominalization derived from the long-established adjectival pattern within Big Bad Wolf and collocative constructions inspired by it (e.g., I tried to reason with her, but to her I'm just the big bad authority figure who can't be trusted).

Questions about big bad

What does big bad mean?
Big bad means a major adversary or antagonist of a piece of fiction.
What part of speech is big bad?
Big bad is a noun.
How do you pronounce big bad?
Big bad is pronounced /ˌbɪɡ ˈbæd/.
What is the plural of big bad?
The plural of big bad is big bads.

Words near big bad in the dictionary

  1. Big Ass Lake
  2. big babies
  3. big baby
  4. big back
  5. big backs
  6. big bad
  7. Big Bad Wolf
  8. Big Bad Wolves
  9. big bads
  10. big ball of mud
  11. big balls of mud

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: big bad (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: “big bad.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/big_bad. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.