bad boy
"bad-boy" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“bad boy” is uncommon English (outside the top frequency list), classed as a noun. The kind of spelling people second-guess.
- Unranked
- below top-frequency English
- 7
- letters
According to Wiktionary data (CC BY-SA, analyzed September 3, 2026) - A man whose rebellious nature makes him dangerous or attractive.
Corpus desk
Index EN-bad-boy · bad boy · English
bad boy · unranked · 0 variants · 0 confusables
- FREQ-UNRANKED Unranked
- LEN-LONG 7 letters
- VOW-3 3 vowels
- CONFUS-0 No pairs
- VAR-0 0 variants
- BOOK-THIN "B" thin
- PHOTO-UNK Peer pending
Read with this headword: Spelling guide for this pattern
Desk codes from Wiktionary headword shape, FrequencyWords rank tier, confusable-pair count, generated misspelling depth, letter-cohort book size, and photo-finish peer. Not a difficulty grade.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | bad boy |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “bad boy” in English
Rare enough to double-check
bad boy is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. 5 senses are on record.
Zero misspellings are on record for bad boy in our index, and the word's spelling is regular enough that our generator found nothing worth flagging. Our confusable-pair dataset has no match for it, a sign it's visually distinctive enough not to be mixed up with another word.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is easiest to reason about phoneme by phoneme, absent a documented history. The correct English form is bad boy, spelled B-A-D- -B-O-Y.
Definition
- 1A man whose rebellious nature makes him dangerous or attractive.
- 2A male criminal.
- 3An undesirable or difficult task.
- 4A powerful or impressive product or item.
- 5Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see bad, boy.
Recorded use
Wiktionary examplesThese source excerpts show how bad boy appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Yeah, I fit the profile all right. Perfect made-to-order malcontent. Let's sign this bad boy up and sic him on somebody fast, before the foam dries on his mouth.
Among the 'students' receiving below average marks was 22-year-old Vsevolod Raube from Bobruisk, who was considered the 'bad boy of the party'.
Definitions, pronunciation, and etymology for this entry are drawn from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org structured extract (CC BY-SA). See the methodology for how each field is sourced and updated.