What does "sociopath" mean?

A person with an antisocial personality disorder.

How do you pronounce "sociopath"?

Pronounced //ˈsəʊ.si.ə(ʊ)ˌpæθ//.

Common synonyms include: alcoholic, double personality, drug user, dual personality, escapist, hypochondriac.

//ˈsəʊ.si.ə(ʊ)ˌpæθ// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Noun

1
A person with an antisocial personality disorder.
"And Keith Rabois, an early executive at PayPal and LinkedIn, who in 2016 called Trump a “sociopath”, pledged $1mn to his campaign."
2
someone with a sociopathic personality; a person with an antisocial personality disorder (‘psychopath’ was once widely used but has now been superseded by ‘sociopath’) wordnet

"The hallmark of a sociopath is a lack of empathy."

From socio- + -path. First use appears c. 1914.

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