Badmash
//bʌdˈmɑːʃ// noun
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
Noun
- 1 A rogue, ruffian or miscreant. British, India, South-Asia
"‘However big a badmash one is – if one's happy in consequence, that's some justification.’"
Example
More examples"I don't think he's a badmash. His hands are like a manual worker's."
Etymology
Borrowed from Hindustani بدمعاش (badm'āś) / बदमाश (badmāś) and its source, Persian بدمعاش (badma'âš), from بد (bad, “bad, evil”) + معاش (ma'âš, “life, livelihood”), ultimately from Arabic عَاشَ (ʕāša, “to live”). Compare lowlife, which is a similar formation in English.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.