Antiheroine
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A female protagonist who proceeds in an unheroic manner, such as by criminal means, via cowardly actions, or for mercenary goals; a female antihero.
"Since she sprang from the imagination of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen in 1890, this coldhearted antiheroine has maintained a tight grip on the attention of audiences across the globe, outstripping all the many other complicated women in Ibsen’s oeuvre, even the door-slamming Nora of “A Doll’s House”."
Example
More examples"Since she sprang from the imagination of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen in 1890, this coldhearted antiheroine has maintained a tight grip on the attention of audiences across the globe, outstripping all the many other complicated women in Ibsen’s oeuvre, even the door-slamming Nora of “A Doll’s House”."
Etymology
From anti- + heroine.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.