nefarious
UK/nɪˈfɛəɹi.əs/
More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations
Australia/nɪˈfeːɹi.əs/
nefarious adjective: sinful, villainous, criminal, or wicked, especially when noteworthy or notorious for such characteristics.
Adjective
nefarious (comparative more nefarious, superlative most nefarious)
- Sinful, villainous, criminal, or wicked, especially when noteworthy or notorious for such characteristics.
- Aliens have a nefarious connotation in many science fiction books.
- "If the vessel be no fair-trading slaver, nor a common cruiser of his Majesty, it is as tangible as the best man's reasoning, that she may be neither more nor less than the ship of that nefarious pirate the Red Rover."1828, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter 2, in The Red Rover
- Synonyms:
- evil, iniquitous, sinister, underhanded, vile, good-for-nothing, abandoned, arrant, bad, bad apple
nefarious meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Malayalam
nefarious in Hindi
- नापाक
nefarious in Tamil
- இழிந்த, கொடிய, பழியுறு, வெறுக்கத்தக்க
nefarious in Urdu
- nefarious
- کھوٹا khoṭā
nefarious in Malayalam
- sinful, wicked, evil
- പരമദുഷ്ടമായ, അധർമ്മമായ, ഹീനമായ, ദൗഷ്ട്യം മുഴുത്ത, പാപാത്മകമായ, ദുഷ്ടമായ
More languagesFewer languages
- nefarious in Kannada
- ಅತಿದುಷ್ಟ, ದುರ್ಮಾರ್ಗದ, ಕ್ರೂರ, ಕಾನೂನುಬಾಹಿರ
- nefarious in Arabic
- شَائِن šāʔin
Examples of nefarious in a sentence
- Mommsen […]declares that Catiline in particular was "one of the most nefarious men in that nefarious age.1877, Anthony Trollope, chapter 9, in The Life of Cicero:
- The fact that the room was still in darkness made it obvious that something nefarious was afoot.1921, P. G. Wodehouse, chapter 26, in The Indiscretions of Archie:
- “I try to let everyone back here in Minnesota know exactly the nefarious activities that are taking place in Washington.”2009 October 14, Monica Davey, “Fact Checker Finds Falsehoods in Remarks”, in New York Times, retrieved 12 May 2014:
Synonyms of nefarious
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of nefarious
| comparative | more nefarious |
|---|---|
| superlative | most nefarious |
Origin of nefarious
From Latin nefārius (“execrable, abominable”), from nefās (“something contrary to divine law, an impious deed, sin, crime”), from ne- (“not”) + fās (“the dictates of religion, divine law”), which is related to Latin for (“to speak, to say”) and cognate to Ancient Greek φημί (phēmí, “to say”).
Words formed from nefarious
Words that rhyme with nefarious
- cibarious
- scarious
- Stradivarius
- tartareous
- vagarious
- vicarious
- Aquarius
- atrabilarious
- calcareous
- contrarious
- hilarious
- lampadarius
48 more rhymesFewer rhymes
- librarius
- malarious
- multifarious
- omnifarious
- precarious
- riparious
- testudinarious
- various
- acinarious
- adversarious
- anticarious
- apocrisarius
- apocrisiarius
- arbitrarious
- arenarious
- argillocalcareous
- armarius
- assarius
- atramentarious
- Belisarius
- bordarius
- burglarious
- caeremoniarius
- calcarious
- carious
- confessarius
- corneo-calcareous
- cotarius
- duplicarius
- filarious
- fimetarious
- frumentarious
- glareous
- howlarious
- lapidarious
- librarious
- multivarious
- nectareous
- nectarious
- nightmarious
- noncalcareous
- noncarious
- nongregarious
- nonmalarious
- nonvicarious
- octarius
- octofarious
- octonarius
Questions about nefarious
- What does nefarious mean?
- Nefarious means sinful, villainous, criminal, or wicked, especially when noteworthy or notorious for such characteristics.
- What is nefarious in Hindi?
- Nefarious in Hindi is नापाक. See Nefarious meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use nefarious in a sentence?
- Mommsen […]declares that Catiline in particular was "one of the most nefarious men in that nefarious age.
- What part of speech is nefarious?
- Nefarious is an adjective.
- How do you pronounce nefarious?
- Nefarious is pronounced /nɪˈfɛəɹi.əs/ (UK).
Words near nefarious in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: nefarious (page history and authors); nefarious (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); nefarious (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); کھوٹا (Urdu) (page history and authors); nefarious (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); nefarious (Kannada 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-nefarious.ogg.
Cite this entry: “nefarious.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/nefarious. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.