Anti-villain

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An antagonist who has or may have noble or honorable aims, but pursues them destructively.

    "As much the anti-hero initially as Thorpe is anti-villain, Tinley's function in the first volume is to expose to Catherine various modes of triviality and affectation."

Example

More examples

"As much the anti-hero initially as Thorpe is anti-villain, Tinley's function in the first volume is to expose to Catherine various modes of triviality and affectation."

Etymology

From anti- + villain.

Related phrases

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.