From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishvillainvil‧lain /ˈvɪlən/ ●○○ noun [countable] 1 ABAD PERSONthe main bad character in a film, play, or story2 → the villain of the piece3 informal a bad person or criminal
Examples from the Corpus
villain• He became the best available villain for those who wished to fasten upon an individual to blame for Britain's plight.• That, of course, is to stand reality on its head, since the industrialised nations are manifestly the real environmental villains.• You've assigned me the role of heartless villain financier, obsessed with money, wealth, and luxury.• And the leading villain, of course, is the greedy oil industry, according to the conventional consumer bleat.• Aristodemus went home and found himself ostracized, a national villain until he expiated his disgrace by dying a hero at Plataea.• It searches for heroes in the knowledge that villains are thick on the ground.• "Speed 2" stars Willem Dafoe as the villain who takes over a luxury cruise ship.• At the end she asks whether in all her stories she has been, not the heroine, but the villain.• At the end of the story, the villain is caught and punished.• The villain is an investor who kills with such glee that he almost seems corny.Origin villain (1300-1400) Old French vilain “peasant”, from Medieval Latin vilanus, from Latin villa; → VILLA 