Word.ws English Dictionary

wicked

/ˈwɪk.ɪd/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

New Zealand/ˈwək.əd/

wicked adjective: evil or mischievous by nature; morally reprehensible. Also the simple past and past participle of wick.

Adjective (1)

wicked (comparative wickeder or more wicked, superlative wickedest or most wicked)

  1. Evil or mischievous by nature; morally reprehensible.
    • Genuine cowards follow wicked people and cannot reliably sustain any virtue.
    • The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bolde as a lyon.1611, The Holy Bible, […] (King James Version), London: […] Robert Barker, […], →OCLC, Proverbs 28:1
  2. Harsh; severe.
    • wicked wind
  3. (slang) Excellent; awesome; masterful; exceptional.
    • That was a wicked guitar solo, bro!
    • The Artemis II astronauts sent back descriptions of the total solar eclipse they viewed from space to NASA's Mission Control. "It’s truly hard to describe. It is amazing," pilot Victor Glover said. Glover said that the Orion spacecraft was made as dark as possible due to every bit of light in the...2026 April 6, Mary Kekatos, Julia Jacobo, Leah Sarnoff, Ivan Pereira, quoting Victor Glover, “'Absolutely spectacular, surreal': Astronauts describe solar eclipse”, in ABC News, retrieved 06 Apr 2026

Adverb

wicked (not comparable)

  1. (Scotland, archaic, slang, slightly dated in Boston) To a superlative extent, very, extremely
    • I didn't really wanna go see On Golden Pond with the fam, but my mom made me go, and I must say that in retrospect it was a wicked expressive film, with a lot of significant meaning.
    • The band we went to see the other night was pissah, and they were wicked loud!

Noun

the wicked pl (plural only)

  1. (plural, plural-only) Wicked (evil) people collectively.
    • And goodness knows the wicked's lives are lonely / Goodness knows the wicked die alone2024, Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Wicked Movie Cast, “No One Mourns the Wicked”, in Wicked: The Soundtrack, performed by Ariana grande

Adjective (2)

UK/wɪkt/New Zealand/wəkt/

wicked (not comparable)

  1. Having a wick.
    • a two-wicked lamp
    • Up went Moggy, with her thick-wicked kitchen candle, to seek repose; […]1863, Sheridan Le Fanu, The House by the Churchyard

Adjective (3)

IPA/ˈwɪkɪd/

wicked

  1. (UK, dialectal, obsolete) Active; brisk.
  2. (UK, Yorkshire, dialectal) Infested with maggots.

Also used as

wicked is also the simple past and past participle of wick.

wicked is also the alternative form of wick.

wicked meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Sanskrit and Arabic

wicked in Hindi

evil or mischievous
दुराचारी durācārī

wicked in Tamil

பொல்லாதவர்

wicked in Sanskrit

evil or mischievous
अघ agha, दुर्जन durjana

wicked in Arabic

evil or mischievous
شِرِير širīr
More languagesFewer languages
wicked in Persian
شرور šarur
wicked in Thai
ชั่วร้าย chûua-ráai, เจ๋ง jěng

Examples of wicked in a sentence

  • I think it is perfectly wicked, and I told her so.”1913, Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Return of Tarzan, New York: Ballantine Books, published 1963, page 101:
  • What a wicked game to play, to make me feel this way / What a wicked thing to do, to let me dream of you / What a wicked thing to say, you never felt this way1989, Chris Isaak, “Wicked Game”, in Heart Shaped World:
  • "It’s a wicked view," he said of the darkened moon with deep space behind it.2026 April 6, Mary Kekatos, Julia Jacobo, Leah Sarnoff, Ivan Pereira, quoting Victor Glover, “'Absolutely spectacular, surreal': Astronauts...
  • Those aren't too heavy, are they? / Sonia: No, they're actually, like, wicked light.2025, Love On the Spectrum, season 3, episode 3, James and Sonia (actors):

All 40 example sentences with wicked

Synonyms of wicked

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of wicked

Forms of wicked

comparativewickeder
comparativemore wicked
superlativewickedest
superlativemost wicked

Origin of wicked

From Middle English wicked, wikked, an alteration of Middle English wicke, wikke (“morally perverse, evil, wicked”). Of uncertain origin. Possibly from an adjectival use of Old English wiċċa (“wizard, sorcerer”), from Proto-West Germanic *wikkō (“necromancer, sorcerer”), though the phonology makes this theory difficult to explain. Alternatively, perhaps related to English wicker, Old Norse víkja (“to bend to, yield, turn, move”), Swedish vika (“to bend, fold, give way to”), English weak. The "excellent, awesome" sense is an ameliorative semantic shift from the original sense of "evil, mischievous". Compare similar semantic development in terrific and sick.

See wick.

Words formed from wicked

Phrases with wicked

Questions about wicked

What does wicked mean?
Wicked means evil or mischievous by nature; morally reprehensible.
What is wicked in Hindi?
Wicked in Hindi is दुराचारी (durācārī). See Wicked meaning in Hindi.
How do you use wicked in a sentence?
I think it is perfectly wicked, and I told her so.”
What part of speech is wicked?
Wicked can be an adjective, an adverb or a noun.
How do you pronounce wicked?
Wicked is pronounced /ˈwɪk.ɪd/ (UK).

Words near wicked in the dictionary

  1. wickape
  2. Wickard
  3. Wickards
  4. wickawee
  5. wicke
  6. wicked
  7. Wicked Bible
  8. Wicked Bibles
  9. wicked pissah
  10. wicked problem
  11. wicked problems

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: wicked (page history and authors); wicked (Tamil, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). 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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-us-wicked.ogg, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-wicked (wick).wav.

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