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Public Enemy No. 1

Public Enemy No. 1 is the alternative form of public enemy number one.

Meaning of public enemy number one

Noun

public enemy number one (uncountable)

  1. (US, dated) A person who ranks highest on the federal government's prioritized list of wanted criminal fugitives.
    • John Dillinger, America's Public Enemy No. 1 and the most notorious criminal of recent times, was shot and killed at 10:40 o'clock tonight by Federal agents.1934 July 22, en, “Dillinger Slain in Chicago”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 1
  2. (figuratively) A person, organization, or other object considered to be particularly menacing, harmful, or loathsome.
    • The fact is that Reaganomics slowed down the breakneck economy and succeeded in defeating public enemy number one, runaway inflation.1983 January 17, William Safire, “Essay: The Midterm Crisis”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC

Questions about Public Enemy No. 1

What is Public Enemy No. 1 the alternative form of?
Public Enemy No. 1 is the alternative form of public enemy number one.

Words near Public Enemy No. 1 in the dictionary

  1. public domain
  2. Public Domain Day
  3. public domainness
  4. public enemies
  5. public enemy
  6. Public Enemy No. 1
  7. public enemy number one
  8. public eye
  9. public figure
  10. public figures
  11. public finance

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Public Enemy No. 1 (page history and authors); public enemy number one (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: “Public Enemy No. 1.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/public_enemy_no._1. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.