Word.ws English Dictionary

Norman Bates

Norman Bates noun: a male serial killer or villain, especially one with a problematic relationship with his mother and who seems superficially calm, pleasant or shy.

Noun

Norman Bates (plural Norman Bateses)

  1. A male serial killer or villain, especially one with a problematic relationship with his mother and who seems superficially calm, pleasant or shy.
    • I don’t know why but Mr Martin Harris gives me Norman Bates vibe.2021 August 4, anonymous author, “I don’t know why but Mr Martin Harris gives me Norman Bates vibe.”, in reddit.com, archived from the original on 18 Aug 2026
    • I, of course, felt like I was the Norman Bates of talk show hosts, throwing my mother under the show biz bus and never looking back. But my guests snapped me back into why we were here.2025, Bruce Vilanch, It Seemed Like a Bad Idea at the Time: The Worst TV Shows in History and Other Things I Wrote, Chicago Review Press, page 187

Examples of Norman Bates in a sentence

  • Munis are the Norman Bates of Wall Street: They seem mild-mannered on the surface, but when you get to know them—-well, they can sure be surprising!2007, Gary Weiss, Wall Street Versus America: A Muckraking Look at the Thieves, Fakers, and Charlatans Who Are Ripping You Off, Portfolio...
  • Less prevalent, thankfully, was a category of guys who didn't so much turn me off as just give me the creeps-the Norman Bates of match.com.2004, Suzanne Schlosberg, The Curse of the Singles Table: A True Story of 1001 Nights Without Sex, Grand Central Publishing:

Forms of Norman Bates

pluralNorman Bateses

Origin of Norman Bates

From the character from the film franchise Psycho.

Questions about Norman Bates

What does Norman Bates mean?
Norman Bates means a male serial killer or villain, especially one with a problematic relationship with his mother and who seems superficially calm, pleasant or shy.
How do you use Norman Bates in a sentence?
Munis are the Norman Bates of Wall Street: They seem mild-mannered on the surface, but when you get to know them—-well, they can sure be surprising!
What part of speech is Norman Bates?
Norman Bates is a noun.
What is the plural of Norman Bates?
The plural of Norman Bates is Norman Bateses.

Words near Norman Bates in the dictionary

  1. normalphobic
  2. normals
  3. normalty
  4. normalwise
  5. norman
  6. Norman Bates
  7. Norman Conquest
  8. Norman County
  9. Norman French
  10. Norman Invasion
  11. Norman Island

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Norman Bates (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:

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