bad guy
"bad-guy" is a 6-letter English headword indexed on PlainSpell.
The verdict
“bad guy” 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 villain, particularly an antagonist in a story.
Corpus desk
Index EN-bad-guy · bad guy · English
bad guy · 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 guy |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Noun |
| Letters | 7 |
| Misspellings tracked | 0 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Long-tail rank of “bad guy” in English
Rare enough to double-check
bad guy is uncommon English outside the top frequency list, classed as anoun. Rarity is why readers land here mid-draft. Gloss: "a villain, particularly an antagonist in a story.".
Our edit-distance generator produced no likely misspellings for bad guy, a straightforward case of a spelling with little room for common typos. This headword has no recorded confusable partner, since its spelling is unusual enough that it doesn't cluster with a lookalike.
Wiktionary doesn't record an etymology for this headword, so its spelling is best explained by sound-to-letter mapping rather than etymology. The correct English form is bad guy, spelled B-A-D- -G-U-Y.
Definition
- 1a villain, particularly an antagonist in a story.
Recorded use
Wiktionary exampleThese source excerpts show how bad guy appears in context. They illustrate usage; the definition above remains the entry’s reference meaning.
Perversely, we love John Wick himself. That lethal, bereaved assassin is a good bad guy for our times, the natural extension of Tony Soprano, Walter White and all the other heroic antiheroes the culture has embraced.
Synonyms
Antonyms
This word in other languages
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.